m. 




Every Child Should Know 




Edited by 
HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE 



Essays Every Child Should Know 



The "Every Child Should Know" Books 

Birds Every Child Should Know, 

By Neltje 'Blanchan 

Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know, 

Edited by Hamilton W. Mahie 

Heroes Every Child Should Know, 

Edited by Hamilton W. Mabie 

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Edited by "Dolores Bacon 

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Edited by Hamilton W . Mabie 

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"BEING A BOY" 



ESSAYS THAT EVERY 
CHILD SHOULD KNOW 

A SELECTION OF THE WRITINGS OF 
ENGLISH AND AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 



lEDITED by: 



HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE 




NEW YORK 

Doubleday, Page & Company 

1908 



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Copyright, 1908, by 

DOUBLKDAY, PaGE & CoMPANY 

Published, March, 1908 

All Rights Reserved 

Including that of Translation into Foreign Languages 

Including the Scandinavian 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

The selections from Hawthorne, Holmes, Warner and 
Aldrich are used by permission of and by special ar- 
rangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 
the authorized publishers of their works. Messrs. Charles 
Scribner's Sons have kindly permitted the use of the 
selections by Donald G. Mitchell. The essay on " Cats" 
by Philip Gilbert Hamerton is used by permission of 
Messrs. Little, Brown & Co.; and Alexander Smith's essay 
''On Vagabonds," through the courtesy of Messrs. L. C. 
Page & Company. 



INTRODUCTION 

0!srE of the most familiar passages in dramatic literature 
describes the seven ages of man as they appeared to 
the author of "As You Like It": the infant in his nurse's 
arms; the whining schoolboy, with "shining morning 
face," creeping to school; the lover, "sighing like a 
furnace"; the soldier, "bearded like the pard"; the 
justice, "full of wise saws"; "the lean and slippered 
pantaloon." This is a highly imaginative rendering of 
the facts of life. Nobody escapes the dangers of infancy; 
the fortunate become schoolboys and, later, lovers; but 
comparatively few men turn soldiers, though every true 
man has some soldierly qualities; still fewer wear the 
robes of the judge, though every man ought to have 
something of his wisdom; and the number of helpless 
old people becomes smaller and smaller. 

In Shakespeare's time a man was considered old at 
forty; now-a-days many men and women are alive and 
at work at eighty. People have fallen into the habit of 
talking about "the good old times" when everybody 
lived to a great age; as a matter of fact, however, there is 
no doubt that the hardships of travel, absence of comforts, 
ignorance of the laws of health, bad air, bad food, bad 
drainage, lack of heat in cold and inclement seasons, 
indifference to sunlight and to the presence of filth, 
crude methods of surgery and small knowledge of 
medicine, in the good old days killed people by the thou- 
sands who under present conditions would live and 
prosper in mind and body to a vigorous old age. Men 



viii Essays Every Child Should Know 

still grow old, but they live longer than their forefathers 
because they have found out how to live by long and 
painful experience. 

Not only have they discovered the way of life, the path 
along which all men must travel, but they have learned 
many things about the world through which this way runs 
like one of those great Roman roads which the generations 
have trodden for two thousand years. They have tried 
all manner of experiments as they journeyed; they have 
studied one another in all kinds of experience; they have 
made excursions in every direction and learned many 
things which cannot be seen from the main highway; 
they have set their minds and hands at all kinds of work 
and play; they have made a host of beautiful or ugly 
objects out of the wood, stone, clay, marble and other 
materials they found about them; they have built houses 
for shelter and homes for the things they loved or the 
gods they worshipped; they have searched the ground, 
the sea and the air and discovered all manner of wonder- 
ful secrets about themselves and the world through which 
they are travelling. They still pass through the seven 
ages which Jacques described; they are born helpless 
infants, they go through boyhood, manhood and old age, 
and they die; but the great family to which they belong 
does not die; the young crowd in through the gate of 
birth as the old go out through the gate of death. 

This great family, which we call the race, has also had 
its different ages: its infancy, its childhood, its youth, its 
maturity; but its old age has not come. Sometimes it 
seems to be losing strength and energy ; and then, slowly 
or suddenly, it has grown young again and filled the 
earth with the sound of its building and the noise of 
its action. 



Introduction ix 

It has a memory which we call history, and it can recall 
at will all that it has passed through or found out in its 
long march. It remembers what happened to it in child- 
hood, and what it thought of the wonderful place in 
which it played and went to school; just as a man remem- 
bers his adventures as a boy and his thoughts about 
things; his fear of going into the woods alone at night 
because of the strange beings who might be hidden there; 
his belief that there were all kinds of magical goings-on 
in the heart of the woods if one could but hear what was 
said and see what was being done without being seen 
himself. 

Every age through which men have passed on their 
way, as a race, from childhood to manhood, has had its 
own thoughts about things and its own explanations of its 
mysterious life and of the mysterious world about it; so 
that the story of the childhood, boyhood, youth and 
manhood of humanity can be read in the books each 
period has made for itself. As imaginative children tell 
one another stories in which real things are confused with 
imaginary ones, and the actual world peopled with 
creatures of fancy, and thunder, lightning, wind, storm 
and sea spoken of as if there were good or evil creatures 
behind them, so men in the childhood of their knowledge 
and mental growth told stories about the strange world 
in which they lived, and explained its forces and move- 
ments by regarding them as under the control of imagin- 
ary beings like themselves, only possessed of greater 
power. Thus the myths, which were poetic rather than 
scientific explanations of Nature, came into existence in 
great numbers and marked the beginning of literature. 
A little later, while they were still seeing the world 
through the imagination rather than with trained eyes, 



X Essays Every Child Should Know 

men created the fairy stories in which they softened the 
hard facts of life by letting fancy play about them; mak- 
ing wicked giants to work mischief and good genii and 
kindly fairies to aid people who were in trouble, restore 
to their natural forms children who had been trans- 
formed, by enchantment, into birds or beasts. Still 
later, when men had passed out of childhood into youth, 
they made the legends which deal freely and poetically 
with persons, real or imaginary, or with historical inci- 
dents which they embellished with miraculous adven- 
tures, and which are told as simply as if they were 
describing everyday occurrences. 

All these forms of literature belong to the childhood or 
youth of the race, while it was still largely ignorant of its 
surroundings and much more given to looking at things 
through the imagination than to observing them care- 
fully; and before its adventures and experiences had 
become so many and so various that they pressed upon 
the mind for explanation more insistently than the world 
without. The essay came into existence when men 
began to know themselves somewhat, and were eager to 
know more; when the life within had become more 
engrossing and fascinating than the life without. The 
essay was, therefore, one of the products of the period of 
manhood or maturity; it marked the age of reflection on 
the happenings of life; and was the endeavour, by 
meditation on those happenings, to understand what they 
meant. No sooner had men begun to think about them- 
selves and their experiences than they became aware 
that a great new field had opened before them; for 
whatever had to do with human nature was material for 
thought and immensely interesting. Sad things and 
gay things; the tragedy of life and the merry humour of 



Introduction xi 

it; its greatness and its littleness; the endless variety 
and range of its experiences; its oddities, eccentricities, 
inconsistencies: all these things caught the eye of the 
essayist and gave him inexhaustible material for reflection. 
He could meditate on old age or friendship as did Cicero, 
or on morals as did Plutarch, two of the earliest essayists; 
on all kinds of men and the things that happened to 
them, as did Montaigne, the earliest and one of the fore- 
most of the modern essayists; on death and empire and 
ambition and noble station as did Bacon, whose style and 
manner have the dignity of the subjects they discuss. 
He could describe manners and social customs with the 
charm of mingled seriousness and humour, as did Addi- 
son ; he could draw portraits of historical persons as did 
Macaulay, or etch wonderful character studies as did 
Carlyle, or let a quaint humour play around familiar 
things and people, or things of great moment and people 
of great oddity, as did Lamb; he could describe with 
happy phrase historic places or old habits of life as did 
Irving; or give familiar scenes and places strange and 
mysterious setting of suggestion as did Hawthorne. 

The essayists belong to the reflective, meditative period 
of life; they are often shrewd observers, with a keen eye 
for everything which shows character and an immense 
curiosity in everything which reveals the ways of men; 
but there is always an element of reflection in their work; 
a selection and arrangement of materials which embody 
the results of thought. Human experience is the material 
with which they deal, and they do not appear until men 
have lived long enough to accumulate the results of 
experience. To the understanding and expression of 
this experience they bring original minds and individual 
quality of feeling or of style; for the two prime factors 



xii Essays Every Child Should Know 

in the essay as a form of literature are abundance of 
human experience and the mind or temperament 
or artistic energy and grace of a writer of genuine 
individuality. 

In this selection of essays, made for young readers who 
have begun to be interested not only in the spectacle of 
life but in its meaning, the endeavour has been to avoid 
abstract discussions and critical or philosophical medita- 
tions, and to present examples of the more vital, pictorial 
and humorous work in this rich jQeld. 

— Hamilton W. Mabie. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



I. The Coverly Sabbath .... 3 
Joseph Addison 

II. A Day's Ramble in London . . 7 

Richard Steele 

III. A Dissertation upon Roast Pig . 14 

Charles Lamb 

IV. Dream Children: A Reverie . 24 

Charles Lamb 

V. Christmas Day 30 

Washington Irving 

VI. Stratford-on-Avon .... 46 

Washington Irving 

VII. Sunday at Home 67 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 

VIII. The Old Apple Dealer ... 76 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 

IX. Revolt of the Tartars . . .85 
Thomas De Quincey 

X. Cinders from the Ashes . . . 152 
Oliver Wendell Holmes 

XI. Rain in the Garret . . . .173 
Donald G. Mitchell 

XII. School Dreams. . . . . 179 
Donald G. Mitchell 

xiii 



xiv Essays Every Child Should Know 



PAGB 



XIII. Cats i88 

Philip Gilbert Hamerton 

XIV. On Vagabonds 204 

Alexander Smith 

XV. Marjorie Fleming . . . .228 
John Brown, M. D. 

XVI. Being a Boy 258 

Charles Dudley Warner 

XVII. The Delights of Farming . . .263 
Charles Dudley Warner 

XVIII. The Little Violinist . . . 268 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich 



Essays Every Child Should Know 



ESSAYS EVERY CHILD SHOULD 
KNOW 



THE COVERLY SABBATH, 

Monday, July 9, 1711 

I AM always very well pleased with a country Sunday, 
and think, if keeping holy the seventh day were 
only a human institution, it would be the best method 
that could have been thought of for the polishing and 
civilising of mankind. It is certain the country people 
would soon degenerate into a kind of savages and bar- 
barians, were there not such frequent returns of a stated 
time, in which the whole village meet together with their 
best faces, and in their cleanliest habits, to converse with 
one another upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties 
explained to them, and join together in adoration of the 
Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of the 
whole week, not only as it refreshes in their minds the 
notions of religion, but as it puts both the sexes upon 
appearing in their most agreeable forms, and exerting 
all such qualities as are apt to give them a figure in the 
eye of the village. A country fellow distinguishes him- 
self as much in the churchyard, as a citizen does upon the 
Change, the whole parish-politics being generally dis- 
cussed in that place either after sermon or before the 
bells ring. 

3 



4 Essays Every Child Should Know 

My friend Sir Roger being a good churchman, has 
beautified the inside of his church with several texts of 
his own choosing. He has Hkewise given a handsome 
pulpit-cloth, and railed in the communion-table at his 
own expense. He has often told me, that at his coming 
to his estate he found his parishioners very irregular; 
and that in order to make them kneel and join in the 
responses, he gave every one of them a hassock and a 
common-prayer-book: and at the same time employed 
an itinerant singing-master, who goes about the country 
for that purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes 
of the Psalms; upon which they now very much value 
themselves, and indeed outdo most of the country 
churches that I have ever heard. 

As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he 
keeps them in very good order, and will suffer nobody 
to sleep in it besides himself; for if by chance he has 
been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon recover- 
ing out of it he stands up and looks about him, and if 
he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes them him- 
self, or sends his servant to them. Several other of 
the old knight's particularities break out upon these 
occasions. Sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse 
in the singing Psalms, half a minute after the rest of the 
congregation have done with it; sometimes when he is 
pleased with the matter of his devotion, he pronounces 
"Amen," three or four times to the same prayer; and 
sometimes stands up when everybody else is upon their 
knees, to count the congregation, or see if any of his 
tenants are missing. 

I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my old 
friend, in the midst of the service, calling out to one John 
Matthews to mind what he was about, and not disturb 



The Coverley Sabbath 5 

the congregation. This John Matthews it seems is 
remarkable for being an idle fellow, and at that time 
was kicking his heels for his diversion. This authority 
of the knight, though exerted in that odd manner which 
accompanies him in all circumstances of life, has a very 
good effect upon the parish, who are not polite enough 
to see anything ridiculous in his behaviour; besides 
that the general good sense and worthiness of his char- 
acter make his friends observe these little singularities 
as foils that rather set off than blemish his good qualities. 

As soon as the sermon is finished, nobody presumes 
to stir till Sir Roger is gone out of the church. The 
knight walks down from his seat in the chancel between 
a double row of his tenants, that stand bowing to him 
on each side: and every now and then inquires how such 
a one's wife, or mother, or son, or father do, whom he 
does not see at church; which is understood as a secret 
reprimand to the person that is absent. 

The chaplain has often told me, that upon a catechis- 
ing day, when Sir Roger has been pleased with a boy 
that answers well, he has ordered a Bible to be given 
him next day for his encouragement; and sometimes 
accompanies it with a flitch of bacon to his mother. Sir 
Roger has likewise added five pounds a year to the 
clerk's place; and that he may encourage the young 
fellows to make themselves perfect in the church-service 
has promised upon the death of the present incumbent, 
who is very old, to bestow it according to merit. 

The fair understanding between Sir Roger and his 
chaplain, and their mutual concurrence in doing good, 
is the more remarkable, because the very next village is 
famous for the differences and contentions that rise 
between the parson and the 'squire, who live in a 



6 Essays Every Child Should Know 

perpetual state of war. The parson is always preaching 
at the 'squire; and the 'squire, to be revenged on the 
parson, never comes to church. The 'squire has made all 
his tenants atheists and tithe-stealers; while the parson 
instructs them every Sunday in the dignity of his order, 
and insinuates to them, in almost every sermon, that he 
is a better man than his patron. In short matters have 
come to such an extremity, that the 'squire has not said 
his prayers either in public or private this half year; and 
that the parson threatens him, if he does not mend his 
manners, to pray for him in the face of the whole 
congregation. 

Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the coun- 
try, are very fatal to the ordinary people; who are so 
used to be dazzled with riches, that they pay as much 
deference to the understanding of a man of an estate, 
as of a man of learning; and are very hardly brought to 
regard any truth, how important soever it may be, that 
is preached to them, when they know there are several 
men of five hundred a year who do not believe it. 

— Joseph Addison. 



II 

A DAY'S RAMBLE IN LONDON 

IT IS an inexpressible pleasure to know a little of 
the world, and be of no character or significancy 
in it. 

To be ever unconcerned, and ever looking on new 
objects with an endless curiosity, is a delight known only 
to those who are turned for speculation: nay, they who 
enjoy it, must value things only as they are the objects 
of speculation, without drawing any worldly advantage 
to themselves from them, but just as they are what con- 
tribute to their amusements, or the improvement of the 
mind. I lay one night last week at Richmond; and 
being restless, not out of dissatisfaction, but a certain 
busy inclination one sometimes has, I rose at four in the 
morning, and took boat for London, with a resolution 
to rove by boat and coach for the next four and twenty 
hours, until the many different objects I must needs 
meet with should tire my imagination, and give me an 
inclination to a repose more profound than I was at that 
time capable of. I beg people's pardon for an odd 
humour I am guilty of, and was often that day, which 
is saluting any person whom I like, whether I know him 
or not. This is a particularity which would be tolerated 
in me, if they considered that the greatest pleasure I 
know I receive at my eyes, and that I am obliged to an 
agreeable person for coming abroad into my view, as 
another is for a visit of conversation at their own houses. 

7 



8 Essays Every Child Should Know 

The hours of the day and night are taken up in the 
cities of London and Westminster, by people as different 
from each other as those who are born in different cen- 
turies. Men of six o'clock give way to those of nine, 
they of nine to the generation of twelve, and they of 
twelve disappear, and make room for the fashionable 
world who have made two o'clock the noon of the day. 

When we first put off from shore, we soon fell in with 
a fleet of gardeners bound for the several marketports 
of London; and it was the most pleasing scene imagin- 
able to see the cheerfulness with which those industrious 
people plied their way to a certain sale of their goods. 
The banks on each side are as well peopled, and beauti- 
fied with as agreeable plantations as any spot on the 
earth; but the Thames itself, loaded with the product 
of each shore, added very much to the landscape. It 
was very easy to observe by their sailing, and the coun- 
tenances of the ruddy virgins, who were supercargoes, 
the parts of the town to which they were bound. There 
was an air in the purveyors for Covent Garden, who 
frequently converse with morning rakes, very unlike the 
seemly sobriety of those bound for Stocks Market. 

Nothing remarkable happened in our voyage; but I 
landed with ten sail of apricot boats at Strand Bridge, 
after having put in at Nine-Elms, and taken in melons, 
consigned by Mr. Cuffee of that place, to Sarah Sewell 
and company, at their stall in Covent Garden. We 
arrived at Strand Bridge at six of the clock, and were 
unloading, when the hackney-coachmen of the foregoing 
night took their leave of each other at the Dark-house, 
to go to bed before the day was too far spent. Chimney- 
sweepers passed by us as we made up to the market, 
and some raillery happened between one of the fruit 



A Day's Ramble in London 9 

wenches and those black men, about the Devil and Eve, 
with allusion to their several professions. I could not 
believe any place more entertaining than Covent Gar- 
den; where I strolled from one fruit shop to another, 
with crowds of agreeable young women around me, who 
were purchasing fruit for their respective families. It 
was almost eight of the clock before I could leave that 
variety of objects. I took coach and followed a young 
lady, who tripped into another just before me, attended 
by her maid. I saw immediately she was of the family 
of the Vain-loves. There are a set of these who of all 
things affect the play of Blindman's-buff, and leading 
men into love for they know not whom, who are fled 
they know not where. This sort of woman is usually 
a jaunty slattern; she hangs on her clothes, plays her 
head, varies her posture, and changes place incessantly; 
and all with an appearance of striving at the same time 
to hide herself, and yet give you to understand she is in 
humour to laugh at you. You must have often seen 
the coachmen make signs with their fingers as they drive 
by each other, to intimate how much they have got that 
day. They can carry on that language to give intelli- 
gence where they are driving. In an instant my coach- 
man took the wink to pursue, and the lady's driver gave 
the hint that he was going through Long-Acre, toward 
St. James's. While he whipped up James Street, we 
drove for King Street, to save the pass at St. Martin's 
Lane. The coachmen took care to meet, jostle, and 
threaten each other for way, and be entangled at the 
end of Newport Street and Long Acre. The fright, 
you must believe, brought down the lady's coach-door, 
and obliged her with her mask off, to enquire into the 
bustle, when she sees the man she would avoid. The 



xo Essays Every Child Should Know 

tackle of the coach-window is so bad she cannot draw it 
up again, and she drives up sometimes wholly discovered, 
and sometimes half escaped, according to the accident 
of carriages in her way. One of these ladies keeps her 
seat in a hackney-coach, as well as the best rider does on 
a managed horse. The laced shoe of her left foot, with 
a careless gesture, just appearing on the opposite cushion, 
held her both firm, and in a proper attitude to receive 
the next jolt. 

As she was an excellent coach-woman, many were 
the glances at each other which we had for an hour and 
a half, in all parts of the town, by the skill of our drivers; 
until at last my lady was conveniently lost with notice 
from her coachman to ours to make off, and he should 
hear where she went. This chase was now at an end, 
and the fellow who drove her came to us, and discovered 
that he was ordered to come again in an hour, for that 
she was a Silk-worm. I was surprised with this phrase, 
but found it was cant among the hackney fraternity for 
their best customers, women who ramble twice or thrice 
a week from shop to shop, to turn over all the goods in 
town without buying anything. The Silk-worms are, 
it seems, indulged by the tradesmen; for though they 
never buy, they are ever talking of new silks, laces and 
ribbons, and serve the owners, in getting them customers 
as their common dunners do in making them pay. 

The day of people of fashion began now to break, and 
carts and hacks were mingled with equipages of show 
and vanity; when I resolved to walk it out of cheapness; 
but my unhappy curiosity is such, that I find it always 
my interest to take coach, for some odd adventure among 
beggars, ballad-singers, or the like, detains and throws 
me into expense. It happened so immediately; for 



A Days Ramble in London ii 

at the corner of Warwick Street, as I was listening to a 
new ballad, a ragged rascal, a beggar who knew me, 
came up to me, and began to turn the eyes of the good 
company upon me, by telling me he was extremely poor, 
and should die in the street for want of drink, except I 
immediately would have the charity to give him sixpence 
to go into the next alehouse and save his life. He urged, 
with a melancholy face, that all of his family had died of 
thirst. All the mob have humour, and two or three 
began to take up the jest; by which Mr. Sturdy carried 
his point, and let me sneak off to a coach. As I drove 
along, it was a pleasing reflection to see the world so 
prettily checkered since I left Richmond, and the scene 
still filling with children of a new hour. This satis- 
faction increased as I moved toward the city, and gay 
signs, well disposed streets, magnificent public structures, 
and wealthy shops, adorned with contented faces, made 
the joy still rising till we came into the centre of the city 
and centre of the world of trade, the Exchange of Lon- 
don. As other men in the crowds about me were pleased 
with their hopes and bargains, I found my account in 
observing them, in attention to their several interests. I, 
indeed, looked upon myself as the richest man that 
walked the Exchange that day; for my benevolence made 
me share the gains of every bargain that was made. It 
was not the least of my satisfactions in my survey, to go 
upstairs, and pass the shops of agreeable females; to 
observe so many pretty hands busy in the folding of 
ribbons, and the utmost eagerness of agreeable faces 
in the sale of patches, pins, and wires, on each side the 
counters, was an amusement in which I should longer 
have indulged myself, had not the dear creatures called 
to me to ask what I wanted, when I could not answer, 



12 Essays Every Child Should Know 

only "To look at you." I went to one of the windows 
which opened to the area below, where all the several 
voices lost their distinction, and rose up in a confused 
humming, which created in me a reflection that could 
not come into the mind of any but of one a little too stu- 
dious; for I said to myself, with a kind of pun in thought 
— " What nonsense is all the hurry of this world to those 
who are above it?" In these, or not much wiser 
thoughts, I had like to have lost my place at the chop- 
house, where every man, according to the natural bash- 
fulness or sullenness of our nation, eats in a public room 
a mess of broth, or chop of meat, in dumb silence, as if 
they had no pretence to speak to each other on the foot 
of being men, except they were of each other's 
acquaintance. 

I went afterward to Robin's and saw people who had 
dined with me at the fivepenny ordinary just before, give 
bills for the value of large estates; and could not but 
behold with great pleasure, property lodged in, and 
transferred in a moment from such as would never be 
masters of half as much as is seemingly in them, and 
given from them every day they live. But before five 
in the afternoon I left the city, came to my common 
scene of Covent Garden, and passed the evening at 
Will's, in attending the discourses of several sets of 
people, who relieved each other within my hearing on 
the subject of cards, dice, love, learning, and politics. 
The last subject kept me until I heard the streets in the 
possession of the bellman, who had now the world to 
himself, and cried — "Past two of the clock." This 
roused me from my seat, and I went to my lodging, led 
by a light, whom I put into the discourse of his private 
economy, and made him give me an account of the charge, 



A Days Ramble in London 13 

hazard, profit, and loss of a family that depended upon 
a link, with a design to end my trivial day with the 
generosity of a sixpence, instead of a third part of that 
sum. When I came to my chambers I writ down these 
minutes; but was at a loss what instruction I should 
propose to my reader from the enumeration of so many 
insignificant matters and occurrences; and I thought 
it of great use, if they could learn with me to keep their 
minds open to gratification, and ready to receive it from 
anything it meets with. This one circumstance will 
make every face you see give you the satisfaction you 
now take in beholding that of a friend; will make every 
object a pleasing one; will make all the good which 
arrives to any man, an increase of happiness to yourself. 

— ^RicHARD Steele. 



Ill 

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG 

MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which my 
friend M was obliging enough to read and 

explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate 
their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living 
animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day. This 
period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius 
in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where 
he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, 
literally the Cook's Holiday. The manuscript goes on 
to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which 
I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally dis- 
covered in the manner following. The swine-herd 
Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as 
his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his 
cottage in the care of his eldest son. Bo-bo, a great lub- 
berly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as youn- 
kers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape 
into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, spread 
the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, 
till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage 
(a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may 
think it), what was of much more importance, a fine 
litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number 
perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all 
over the East, from the remotest periods that we read 
of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may 

14 



A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig 15 

think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which 
his father and he could easily build up again with a few 
dry branches, and the labour of an hour or two at any 
time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking 
what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands 
over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely 
sufferers, an odour assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent 
which he had before experienced. What could it pro- 
ceed from? Not from the burnt cottage: he had smelt 
that smell before; indeed this was by no means the first 
accident of the kind which had occurred through the 
negligence of this unlucky young fire-brand. Much 
less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or 
flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time 
overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. 
He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any 
signs of Hfe in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them 
he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. 
Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away 
with his fingers, and for the first time in this life (in the 
world's life indeed, for before him no man had known 
it), he tasted crackling! Again he felt and fumbled at 
the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he 
licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at 
length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the 
pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; 
and surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, 
he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin 
with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his 
throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid 
the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and 
finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the 
young rogue's shoulders as thick as hail-stones, which 



i6 Essays Every Child Should Know 

Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. 
The tickling pleasure which he experienced in his lower 
regions had rendered him quite callous to any incon- 
veniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His 
father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his 
pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming 
a little more sensible of his situation, something like the 
following dialogue ensued: 

"You graceless whelp, what have you got there de- 
vouring ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down 
three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to 
you! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what. 
What have you got there, I say ? " 

"O father, the pig, the pig! do come and taste how 
nice the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his 
son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a 
son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending 
it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the 
fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat, eat, eat, the burnt 
pig, father, only taste— O Lord!"— with such-like 
barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he 
would choke. 

Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the 
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his 
son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the 
crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, 
and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn 
tasted some of its flavour, which, make what sour mouths 
he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeas- 
ing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is 



A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig 17 

a little tedious,) both father and son fairly sat down to 
the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all 
that remained of the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, 
for the neighbours would certainly have stoned them for 
a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of 
improving upon the good meat which God had sent 
them. 

Nevertheless, strange stories got about. It was ob- 
served that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more 
frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time 
forward. Some would break out in broad day, others 
in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure 
was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze; and Ho-ti him- 
self, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastis- 
ing his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than 
ever. At length they were watched, the terrible mystery 
discovered, and father and son summoned to take their 
trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evi- 
dence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in 
court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the 
foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, 
by which the culprits stood accused, might be handed 
into the box. He handled it, and they all handled it; 
and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had 
done before them, and nature prompting to each of 
them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, 
and the clearest charge which judge had ever given — to 
the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, 
reporters, and all present— without leaving the box, or 
any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in 
a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the 



1 8 Essays Every Child Should Know 

manifest iniquity of the decision: and when the court 
was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs 
that could be had for love or money. In a few days his 
lordship's town-house was observed to be on fire. The 
thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen 
but fire in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enor- 
mously dear all over the district. The insurance-oflScers, 
one and all, shut up shop. People built slighter and 
slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science 
of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. 
Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in 
process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like 
our Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, 
or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked {burntj 
as they called it), without the necessity of consuming a 
whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form 
of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit came in a 
century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By 
such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the 
most useful and seemingly the most obvious, arts make 
their way among mankind. 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
above given, it must be agreed that if a worthy pretext 
for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire 
(especially in these days) could be assigned in favour of 
any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be 
found in roast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis, I 
will maintain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
obsoniorum. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between 
pig and pork, those hobby dehoys — but a young and 
tender suckling, under a moon old, guiltless as yet of the 



A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig 19 

sty, with no original speck of the amor immunditice, the 
hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest— his 
voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish 
treble and a grumble — the mild fore-runner or pceludium 
of a grunt. 

He must he roasted. I am not ignorant that our 
ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled; but what a sacri- 
fice of the exterior tegument! 

There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that 
of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, 
crackling, as it is well called. The very teeth are invited 
to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in over- 
coming the coy, brittle resistance — with the adhesive 
oleaginous — O call it not fat ! but an indefinable sweetness 
growing up to it — the tender blossoming of fat — fat 
cropped in the bud — taken in the shoot — in the first 
innocence — the cream and quintessence of the child- 
pig's yet pure food — the lean, no lean, but a kind of 
animal manna — or, rather, fat and lean (if it must be 
so) so blended and running into each other, that both 
together make but one ambrosian result, or common 
substance. 

Behold him, while he is "doing" — it seemeth rather 
a refreshing warmth than a scorching heat that he is so 
passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! 
— Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility 
of that tender age! he hath wept out his pretty eyes — 
radiant jellies — shooting stars — 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he 
lieth! — Wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up 
to the grossness and indocility which too often accom- 
pany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have 
proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable 



20 Essays Every Child Should Know 

animal, wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation. 
From these sins he is happily snatched away. 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care. 

His memory is odoriferous. No clown curseth, while 
his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon; no coal- 
heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages; he hath a fair 
sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure, 
and for such a tomb might be content to die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pine-apple is great. She 
is indeed almost too transcendent — a, delight, if not 
sinful, yet so like to sinning that really a tender- 
conscienced person would do well to pause — too ravish- 
ing for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the 
lips that approach her. Like lovers' kisses, she biteth: 
she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness 
and insanity of her relish; but she stoppeth at the palate; 
she meddleth not with the appetite; and the coarsest 
hunger might barter her consistently for a mutton-chop. 

Pig (let me speak his praise) is no less provocative of 
the appetite than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of 
the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on 
him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be 
unravelled without hazard, he is good throughout. No 
part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, 
as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the 
least envious of banquets. He is all neighbours' fare. 

I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart 
a share of the good things of this life which fall to their 
lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend, I protest 



A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig 21 

I take as great an interest in my friend's pleasures, his 
relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in my own. "Pres- 
ents, " I often say, "endear Absents. " Hares, pheasants, 
partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens (those' "tame 
villatic fowl"), capons, plovers, brawn, barrels of oysters, 
I dispense as freely as I receive them. I love to taste 
them, as it were, upon the tongue of my friend. But 
a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like 
Lear, "give everything." I make my stand upon pig. 
Methinks it is an ingratitude to the giver of all good 
flavours to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house 
slightly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what,) 
a blessing so particularly adapted, predestined, I may 
say, to my individual palate — It argues an insensibiUty. 
I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at school. 
My good old aunt, who never parted with me at the end 
of a holiday without stufl&ng a sweetmeat, or some nice 
thing into my pocket, had dismissed me one evening VN^ith 
a smoking plum-cake, fresh from the oven. In my way 
to school (it was over London Bridge) a grey-headed old 
beggar saluted me. (I have no doubt, at this time of 
day, that he was a counterfeit.) I had no pence to con- 
sole him with, and in the vanity of self-denial, and the 
very coxcombry of charity, schoolboy-like, I made him 
a present of the whole cake. I walked on a little, buoyed 
up, as one is on such occasions, with a sweet soothing of 
self-satisfaction; but before I had got to the end of the 
bridge my better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, 
thinking how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to 
go and give her good gift away to a stranger that I had 
never seen before, and who might be a bad man for 
aught I knew; and then I thought of the pleasure my 
aunt would be taking in thinking that I (I myself, and 



22 Essays Every Child Should Know 

not another) would eat her nice cake. And what should 
I say to her the next time I saw her? — how naughty I 
was to part with her pretty present! — ^and the odour of 
that spicy cake came back upon my recollection, and 
the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken in seeing her 
make it, and her joy when she sent it to the oven, and 
how disappointed she would feel that I had never had a 
bit of it in my mouth at last. And I blamed my imper- 
tinent spirit of almsgiving, and out-of-place hypocrisy of 
goodness; and above all, I wished never to see the face 
again of that insidious, good-for-nothing, old grey 
impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing 
these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death 
with something of a shock, as we hear of any other 
obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or 
it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light 
merely) what effect this process might have towards 
intenerating and dulcifying a substance naturally so 
mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like 
refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we 
condemn the inhumanity how we censure the wisdom of 
the practice. It might impart a gusto. 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young 
students when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with 
much learning and pleasantry on both sides, " Whether, 
supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his 
death by whipping (per flagellationem extremam) su- 
peradded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more 
intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in 
the animal, is man justified in using that method of 
putting the animal to death?" I forget the decision. 

His sauce should be considered: decidedly, a few 



A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig 23 

bread crumbs, done up with his Hver and brains, and 
a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I 
beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your 
whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff 
them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; 
you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than 
they are; but consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 

— Charles Lamb. 



IV 

DREAM CHILDREN; A REVERIE 

CHILDREN love to listen to stories about their 
elders, when they were children; to stretch their 
imagination to the conception of a traditionary great- 
uncle or grandame whom they never saw. It was in 
this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other 
evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, 
who lived in a great house in Norfolk, (a hundred times 
bigger than that in which they and papa lived,) which 
had been the scene (so at least it was generally believed 
in that part of the country) of the tragic incidents which 
they had lately become familiar with from the ballad 
of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the 
whole story of the children and their uncle was to be 
seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece 
of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin 
Redbreasts; till a foolish rich person pulled it down to 
set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, 
with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her 
dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. 
Then I went on to say how religious and how good 
their great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and 
respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the 
mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of 
it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the 
mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who 
preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion 

24 



Dream Children; A Reverie 25 

which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining 
county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had 
been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house 
in a sort while she lived, which afterward came to decay, 
and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments 
stripped and carried away to the owner's other house, 
where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if 
som.e one were to carry away the old tombs they had 
seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady 
C.'s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as 
much as to say, ''that would be foolish indeed." And 
then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was 
attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of 
the gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many miles 
round, to show their respect for her memory, because 
she had been such a good and religious woman ; so good 
indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and 
a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice 
spread her hands. 

Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person 
their great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her 
youth she was esteemed the best dancer (here Alice's 
little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, 
upon my looking grave, it desisted), the best dancer, I 
was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a 
cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it 
could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, 
but they were still upright, because she was so good and 
religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by 
herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; 
and how she believed that an apparition of two 
infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down 
the great staircase near where she slept, but she said 



26 Essays Every Child Should Know 

"those innocents would do her no harm"; and how 
frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my 
maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good 
or religious as she; and yet I never saw the infants. 
Here John expanded his eyebrows and tried to look 
courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her 
grandchildren, having us to the great house in the holi- 
days, where I in particular used to spend many hours 
by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the twelve 
Caesars, that had been Emperors of Rome, till the old 
marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned 
into marble with them; how I never could be tired with 
roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty 
rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, 
and carved oaken panels, with the gilding almost rubbed 
out; sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, 
which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then 
a solitary gardening man would cross me; and how the 
nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without 
my ever offering to pluck them, because they were for- 
bidden fruit, unless now and then; and because I had 
more pleasure in strolling about among the old melan- 
choly-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking up the 
red berries, and the fir-apples, which were good for 
nothing but to look at — or in lying about upon the fresh 
grass with all the fine garden smells around me — or 
basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy myself 
ripening too along with the oranges and the limes in 
that grateful warmth — or in watching the dace that 
darted to and fro in the fish-pond at the bottom of the 
garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging 
midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked at 
their impertinent friskings — I had more pleasure in 



Dream Children; A Reverie 27 

these busy-idle diversions than in all the sweet flavours 
of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such-like common 
baits for children. Here John slyly deposited back upon 
the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by 
Alice, he had meditated dividing with her, and both 
seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as 
irrelevant. 

Then, in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told 
how, though their great-grandmother Field loved 
all her grandchildren, yet in an especial manner she 

might be said to love their uncle, John L -, because 

he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to 
the rest of us; and, instead of moping about in solitary 
corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettle- 
some horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than 
themselves, and make it carry him half over the county 
in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any 
out (and yet he loved the old great house and gardens 
too, but had too much spirit to be always pent up within 
their boundaries) ; and how their uncle grew up to man's 
estate as brave as he was handsome, to the admiration 
of everybody, but of their great-grandmother Field most 
especially; and how he used to carry me upon his back 
when I was a lame-footed boy (for he was a good bit 
older than I) many a mile when I could not walk for 
pain; and how in after life he became lame-footed too, 
and I did not always, I fear, make allowances enough 
for him when he was impatient, and in pain, nor remem- 
ber sufficiently how considerate he had been to me when 
I was lame-footed; and how when he died, though he 
had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died 
a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life 
and death ; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty 



28 Essays Every Child Should Know 

well at first, but afterwards it naunted and haunted me; 
and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, 
and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I 
missed him all day long, and knew not till then how 
much I had loved him. I missed his kindness, and I 
missed his crossness, and wished him to be alive again, 
to be quarrelling with him (for we quarrelled sometimes), 
rather than not have him again, and was as uneasy 
without him as he, their poor uncle, must have 
been when the doctor took off his limb — Here the 
children fell a crying, and asked if their little mourn- 
ing which they had on was not for Uncle John and 
they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about 
their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their 
pretty dead mother. 

Then I told how for seven long years, in hope some- 
times, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted 

the fair AHce W n; and as much as children could 

understand, I explained to them what coyness, and 
difficulty, and denial, meant in maidens — when suddenly, 
turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at 
her eyes with such a reality of re-presentment, that I 
became in doubt which of them stood there before me, 
or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, 
both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, 
receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two 
mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, 
which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the 
effects of speech: "We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor 
are we children at all. The children of Alice call Bar- 
trum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and 
dreams. We are only what might have been, and must 
wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages 



Dream Children; A Reverie 29 



-and imme- 



diately awaking, I found myself quiedy seated in my 
bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the 
faithful Bridget unchanged by my side; but John L. 
(or James Elia) was gone forever. 

— Charles Lamb. 



CHRISTMAS DAY 

WHEN I woke the next morning, it seemed as if 
all the events of the preceding evening had been 
a dream, and nothing but the identity of the ancient 
chamber convinced me of their reality. While I lay 
musing on my pillow, I heard the sound of little feet 
pattering outside of the door, and a whispering 
consultation. Presently a choir of small voices chanted 
forth an old Christmas carol, the burden of which 
was — 

Rejoice, our Saviour he was born 
On Christmas day in the morning. 

I rose softly, slipt on my clothes, opened the door sud- 
denly, and beheld one of the most beautiful little fairy 
groups that a painter could imagine. It consisted of a 
boy and two girls, the eldest not more than six, and 
lovely as seraphs. They were going the rounds of the 
house, and singing at every chamber door; but my 
sudden appearance frightened them into mute bash- 
fulness. They remained for a moment playing on their 
lips with their fingers, and now and then stealing a shy 
glance from under their eyebrows, until, as if by one 
impulse, they scampered away, and as they turned an 
angle of the gallery, I heard them laughing in triumph at 
their escape. 

Everything conspired to produce kind and happy 
feelings in this stronghold of old-fashioned hospitality. 

3° 



Christmas Day 31 

The window of my chamber looked out upon what in 
summer would have been a beautiful landscape. There 
was a sloping lawn, a fine stream winding at the foot of 
it, and a trace of park beyond, with noble clumps of 
trees, and herds of deer. At a distance was a neat ham- 
let, with the smoke from the cottage chimneys hanging 
over it ; and a church with its dark spire in strong relief 
against the clear, cold sky. The house was surrounded 
with evergreens, according to the English custom, which 
would have given almost an appearance of summer; 
but the morning was extremely frosty; the light vapour 
of the preceding evening had been precipitated by the 
cold, and covered all the trees and every blade of grass 
with its fine crystallisations. The rays of a bright 
-morning sun had a dazzling effect among the glittering 
foliage. A robin, perched upon the top of a mountain 
ash that hung its clusters of red berries just before my 
window, was basking himself in the sunshine, and piping 
a few querulous notes; and a peacock was displaying all 
the glories of his train, and strutting with the pride and 
gravity of a Spanish grandee, on the terrace walk below. 

I had scarcely dressed myself, when a servant ap- 
peared to invite me to family prayers. He showed me 
the way to a small chapel in the old wing of the house, 
where I found the principal part of the family already 
assembled in a kind of gallery, furnished with cushions, 
hassocks, and large prayer-books; the servants were 
seated on benches below. The old gentleman read 
prayers from a desk in front of the gallery, and Master 
Simon acted as clerk and made the responses; and I 
must do him the justice to say that he acquitted himself 
with great gravity and decorum. 

The service was followed by a Christmas carol, which 



32 Essays Every Child Should Know 

Mr. Bracebridge himself had constructed from a poem 
of his favourite author, Herrick; and it had been adapted 
to an old church melody by Master Simon. As there 
were several good voices among the household, the effect 
was extremely pleasing; but I was particularly gratified 
by the exaltation of heart, and sudden sally of grateful 
feeling, with which the worthy squire delivered one 
stanza; his eye glistening, and his voice rambling out 
of all the bounds of time and tune: 

" 'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering hearth 

With guiltlesse mirth, 
And giv'st me Wassaile bowles to drink 

Spiced to the brink: 
Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand 

That soiles my land: 
And giv'st me for my bushell sowne, 

Twice ten for one." 

I afterward understood that early morning service 
was read on every Sunday and saint's day throughout 
the year, either by Bracebridge or by some member of 
the family. It was once almost universally the case at 
the seats of the nobility and gentry of England, and it 
is much to be regretted that the custom is falling into 
neglect; for the dullest observer must be sensible of the 
order and serenity prevalent in those households, where 
the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship in 
the morning gives, as it were, the key-note to every tem- 
per for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony. 

Our breakfast consisted of what the squire denominated 
true old English fare. He indulged in some bitter lamen- 
tation over modern breakfasts of tea and toast, which he 
censured as among the causes of modern effeminacy and 
weak nerves, and the decline of old English heartiness; 



Christmas Day ^^ 

and though he admitted them to his table to suit 
the palates of his guests, yet there was a brave dis- 
play of cold meats, wine, and ale, on the sideboard. 

After breakfast I walked about the grounds with 
Frank Bracebridge and Master Simon, or, Mr. Simon, 
as he was called by every body but the squire. We 
were escorted by a number of gentlemanlike dogs, that 
seemed loungers about the establishment; from the 
frisking spaniel to the steady old stag-hound; the last 
of which was of a race that had been in the family time 
out of mind; they were all obedient to a dog-whistle 
which hung to Master Simon's button-hole, and in the 
midst of their gambols would glance an eye occasionally 
upon a small switch he carried in his hand. 

The old mansion had a still more venerable look in 
the yellow sunshine than by pale moonlight; and I could 
not but feel the force of the squire's idea, that the formal 
terraces, heavily moulded balustrades, and clipped yew- 
trees, carried with them an air of proud aristocracy. 
There appeared to be an unusual number of peacocks 
about the place, and I was making some remarks upon 
what I termed a flock of them, that were basking under 
a sunny wall, when I was gently corrected in my phrase- 
ology by Master Simon, who told me that, according to 
the most ancient and approved treatise on hunting, I 
must say a muster of peacocks. "In the same way," 
added he, with a slight air of pedantry, " we say a flight 
of doves or swallows, a bevy of quails, a herd of deer, 
of wrens, or cranes, a skulk of foxes, or a building of 
rooks." He went on to inform me that, according to 
Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, we ought to ascribe to this bird 
*'both understanding and glory; for, being praised, he 
will presently set up his tail, chiefly against the sun, to 



34 Essays Every Child Should Know 

the intent you may the better behold the beauty thereof. 
But at the fall of the leaf, when his tail falleth, he will 
mourn and hide himself in corners, till his tail come 
again as it was." 

I could not help smiling at this display of small erudi- 
tion on so whimsical a subject; but I found that the 
peacocks were birds of some consequence at the hall; 
for Frank Bracebridge informed me that they were great 
favourites with his father, who was extremely careful to 
keep up the breed; partly because they belonged to 
chivalry, and were in great request at the stately banquets 
of the olden time; and partly because they had a pomp 
and magnificence about them, highly becoming an old 
family mansion. Nothing, he was accustomed to say, 
had an air of greater state and dignity than a peacock 
perched upon an antique stone balustrade. 

Master Simon had now to hurry off, having an appoint- 
ment at the parish church with the village choristers, 
who were to perform some music of his selection. There 
was something extremely agreeable in the cheerful flow 
of animal spirits of the little man; and I confess I had 
been somewhat surprised at his apt quotations from 
authors who certainly were not in the range of every- 
day reading. I mentioned this last circumstance to 
Frank Bracebridge, who told me with a smile that Mas- 
ter Simon's whole stock of erudition was confined to 
some half a dozen old authors, which the squire had put 
into his hands, and which he read over and over, when- 
ever he had a studious fit; as he sometimes had on a 
rainy day, or a long winter evening. Sir Anthony 
Fitzherbert's Book of Husbandry; Markham's Country 
Contentments; the Tretyse of Hunting, by Sir Thomas 
Cockayne, Knight; Izaak Walton's Angler, and two or 



Christmas Day 35 

three more such ancient worthies of the pen, were his 
standard authorities; and, Hke all men who know but a 
few books, he looked up to them with a kind of idolatry, 
and quoted them on all occasions. As to his songs, they 
were chiefly picked out of old books in the squire's 
library, and adapted to tunes that were popular among 
the choice spirits of the last century. His practical 
application of scraps of literature, however, had caused 
him to be looked upon as a prodigy of book knowledge 
by all the grooms, huntsmen, and small sportsmen of 
the neighbourhood. 

While we were talking we heard the distant tolling of 
the village bell, and I was told that the squire was a little 
particular in having his household at church on a Christ- 
mas morning; considering it a day of pouring out of 
thanks and rejoicing; for, as old Tusser observed, 

"At Christmas be merry, and thankful withal, 
And feast thy poor neighbours, the great with the small." 

"If you are disposed to go to church," said Frank 
Bracebridge, "I can promise you a specimen of my 
cousin Simon's musical achievements. As the church 
is destitute of an organ, he has formed a band from the 
village amateurs, and established a musical club for 
their improvement; he has also sorted a choir, as he 
sorted my father's pack of hounds, according to the 
directions of Jervaise Markham, in his Country Content- 
ments; for the bass he has sought out all the 'deep, sol- 
emn mouths,' and for the tenor the 'loud-ringing mouths,' 
among the country bumpkins; and for 'sweet mouths,' 
he has culled with curious taste among the prettiest 
lasses in the neighbourhood; though these last, he aflfirms, 
are the most difi&cult to keep in tune; your pretty female 



36 Essays Every Child Should Know 

singer being exceedingly wayward and capricious, and 
very liable to accident." 

As the morning, though frosty, was remarkably fine 
and clear, the most of the family walked to the church, 
which was a very old building of gray stone, and stood 
near a village, about half a mile from the park gate. 
Adjoining it was a low snug parsonage, which seemed 
coeval with the church. The front of it was perfectly 
matted with a yew-tree, that had been trained against 
its walls, through the dense foliage of which apertures 
had been formed to admit light into the small antique 
lattice. As we passed this sheltered nest, the parson 
issued forth and preceded us. 

I had expected to see a sleek well-conditioned pastor, 
such as is often found in a snug living in the vicinity of 
a rich patron's table, but I was disappointed. The 
parson was a little, meagre, black-looking man, with a 
grizzled wig that was too wide, and stood off from each 
ear; so that his head seemed to have shrunk away 
within it, like a dried filbert in its shell. He wore a rusty 
coat, with great skirts, and pockets that would have 
held the church Bible and prayer-book: and his small 
legs seemed still smaller, from being planted in large 
shoes, decorated with enormous buckles. 

I was informed by Frank Bracebridge, that the parson 
had been a chum of his father's at Oxford, and had re- 
ceived this living shortly after the latter had come to his 
estate. He was a complete black-letter hunter, and 
would scarcely read a work printed in the Roman char- 
acter. The editions of Caxton and Wynkin de Worde 
were his delight; and he was indefatigable in his re- 
searches after such old English writers as have fallen 
into oblivion from their worthlessness. In deference, 



Christmas Day 37 

perhaps, to the notions of Mr. Bracebridge, he had 
made diligent investigations into the festive rites and 
holiday customs of former times; and had been as zeal- 
ous in the inquiry as if he had been a boon companion; 
but it was merely with that plodding spirit with which 
men of adust temperament follow up any track of study, 
merely because it is denominated learning; indifferent 
to its intrinsic nature, whether it be the illustration 
of the wisdom, or of the ribaldry and obscenity of 
antiquity. He had pored over these old volumes 
so intensely, that they seemed to have been reflected 
in his countenance; which, if the face be indeed an 
index of the mind, might be compared to a title-page of 
black-letter. 

On reaching the church porch, we found the parson 
rebuking the gray-headed sexton for having used mis- 
tletoe among the greens with which the church was deco- 
rated. It was, he observed, an unholy plant, profaned 
by having been used by the Druids in their mystic cere- 
monies; and though it might be innocently employed 
in the festive ornamenting of halls and kitchens, yet it 
had been deemed by the Fathers of the Church as un 
hallowed, and totally unfit for sacred purposes. So 
tenacious was he on this point, that the poor sexton was 
obliged to strip down a great part of the humble trophies 
of his taste, before the parson would consent to enter 
upon the service of the day. 

The interior of the church was venerable but simple; 
on the walls were several mural monuments of the Brace- 
bridges, and just beside the altar was a tomb of ancient 
workmanship, on which lay the effigy of a warrior in 
armour, with his legs crossed, a sign of his having been a 
crusader. I was told it was one of the family who had 



38 Essays Every Child Should Know 

signalised himself in the Holy Land, and the same whose 
picture hung over the fireplace in the hall. 

During service, Master Simon stood up in the pew, and 
repeated the responses very audibly; evincing that kind 
of ceremonious devotion punctually observed by a gentle- 
man of the old school, and a man of old family connec- 
tions. I observed too that he turned over the leaves of a 
folio prayer-book with something of a flourish; possibly 
to show off an enormous seal-ring which enriched one of 
his fingers, and which had the look of a family relic. But 
he was evidently most solicitous about the musical part of 
the service, keeping his eye fixed intently on the choir, 
and beating time with much gesticulation and emphasis. 

The orchestra was in a small gallery, and presented a 
most whimsical grouping of heads, piled one above the 
other, among which I particularly noticed that of the 
village tailor, a pale fellow with a retreating forehead 
and chin, who played on the clarionet, and seemed to 
have blown his face to a point; and there was another, 
a short pursy man, stooping and labouring at a bass-viol, 
so as to show nothing but the top of a round bald head, 
like the egg of an ostrich. There were two or three pretty 
faces among the female singers, to which the keen air of 
a frosty morning had given a bright rosy tint; but the 
gentlemen choristers had evidently been chosen, like old 
Cremona fiddles, more for tone than looks; and as sev- 
eral had to sing from the same book, there were clus- 
terings of odd physiognomies, not unlike those groups of 
cherubs we sometimes see on country tombstones. 

The usual services of the choir were managed tolerably 
well, the vocal parts generally lagging a little behind the 
instrumental, and some loitering fiddler now and then 
making up for lost time by travelling over a passage 



Christmas Day 39 

with prodigious celerity, and clearing more bars than 
the keenest fox-hunter to be in at the death. But the 
great trial was an anthem that had been prepared and 
arranged by Master Simon, and on which he had founded 
great expectation. Unluckily there was a blunder at 
the very outset; the musicians became flurried; Master 
Simon was in a fever; everything went on lamely and 
irregularly until they came to a chorus beginning " Now 
let us sing with one accord," which seemed to be a signal 
for parting company: all became discord and confusion; 
each shifted for himself, and got to the end as well, or, 
rather, as soon as he could, excepting one old chorister 
in a pair of horn spectacles, bestriding and pinching a 
long sonorous nose, who happened to stand a little apart, 
and, being wrapped up in his own melody, kept on a 
quavering course, wriggling his head, ogHng his book, 
and winding all up by a nasal solo of at least three bars' 
duration. 

The parson gave us a most erudite sermon on the rites 
and ceremonies of Christmas, and the propriety of ob- 
serving it not merely as a day of thanksgiving, but of 
rejoicing; supporting the correctness of his opinions by 
the earliest usages of the Church, and enforcing them by 
the authorities of Theophilus of Cesarea, St. Cyprian, St. 
Chrysostom, St. Augustine, and a cloud more of saints 
and fathers, from whom he made copious quotations. I 
was a little at a loss to perceive the necessity of such a 
mighty array of forces to maintain a point which no one 
present seemed inclined to dispute; but I soon found 
that the good man had a legion of ideal adversaries to 
contend with ; having, in the course of his researches on 
the subject of Christmas, got completely embroiled in the 
sectarian controversies of the Revolution, when the 



40 Essays Every Child Should Know 

Puritans made such a fierce assault upon the ceremonies 
of the Church, and poor old Christmas was driven out of 
the land by proclamation of Parliament. The worthy- 
parson lived but with times past, and knew but little of 
the present. 

Shut up among worm-eaten tomes in the retirement of 
his antiquated little study, the pages of old times were 
to him as the gazettes of the day; while the era of the 
Revolution was mere modern history. He forgot that 
nearly two centuries had elapsed since the fiery persecu- 
tion of poor mince-pie throughout the land; when plum 
porridge was denounced as "mere popery," and roast- 
beef as anti-christian; and that Christmas had been 
brought in again triumphantly with the merry court of 
King Charles at the Restoration. He kindled into 
warmth with the ardour of his contest, and the host of 
imaginary foes with whom he had to combat; he had a 
stubborn conflict with old Prynne and two or three other 
forgotten champions of the Round Heads, on the subject 
of Christmas festivity; and concluded by urging his 
hearers, in the most solemn and affecting manner, to 
stand to the traditional customs of their fathers, and 
feast and make merry on this joyful anniversary of the 
Church. 

I have seldom known a sermon attended apparently 
with more immediate effects; for on leaving the church 
the congregation seemed one and all possessed with the 
gaiety of spirit so earnestly enjoined by their pastor. 
The elder folks gathered in knots in the church-yard 
greeting and shaking hands; and the children ran about 
crying Ule! Ule! and repeating some uncouth rhymes,* 

*"Ule! Ule! 

Three puddings in a pule 
Crack nuts and cry ule!" 



Christmas Day 41 

which the parson, who had joined us, informed me had 
been handed down from days of yore. The villagers 
doffed their hats to the squire as he passed, giving him 
the good wishes of the season with every appearance of 
heartfelt sincerity, and were invited by him to the hall, 
to take something to keep out the cold of the weather; 
and I heard blessings uttered by several of the poor, 
which convinced me that, in the midst of his enjoyments, 
the worthy old cavalier had not forgotten the true Christ- 
mas virtue of charity. 

On our way homeward his heart seemed overflowed 
with generous and happy feelings. As we passed over a 
rising ground which commanded something of a pros- 
pect, the sounds of rustic merriment now and then 
reached our ears: the squire paused for a few moments, 
and looked around with an air of inexpressible benignity. 
The beauty of the day was in itself sufficient to inspire 
philanthropy. Notwithstanding the frostiness of the 
morning, the sun in his cloudless journey had acquired 
sufi&cient power to melt away the thin covering of snow 
from every southern declivity, and to bring out the living 
green which adorns an English landscape even in mid- 
winter. Large tracts of smiling verdure contrasted with 
the dazzling whiteness of the shaded slopes and hollows. 
Every sheltered bank, on which the broad rays rested, 
yielded its silver rill of cold and limpid water glittering 
through the dripping grass; and sent up slight exhala- 
tions to contribute to the thin haze that hung just above 
the surface of the earth. There was something truly 
cheering in this triumph of warmth and verdure over the 
frosty thraldom of winter; it was, as the squire observed, 
an emblem of Christmas hospitality, breaking through 
the chills of ceremony and selfishness, and thawing every 



42 Essays Every Child Should Know 

heart into a flow. He pointed with pleasure to the indi- 
cations of good cheer reeking from the chimneys of the 
comfortable farmhouses, and low thatched cottages. " I 
love," said he, "to see this day well kept by rich and 
poor; it is a great thing to have one day in the year, at 
least, when you are sure of being welcome wherever you 
go, and of having, as it were, the world thrown all open 
to you; and I am almost disposed to join with Poor 
Robin, in his malediction on every churlish enemy to 
this honest festival — 

'Those who at Christmas do repine 

And would fain hence despatch him, 

May they with old Duke Humphry dine, 
Or else may Squire Ketch catch 'em.' " 

The squire went on to lament the deplorable decay of 
the games and amusements which were once prevalent at 
this season among the lower orders, and countenanced by 
the higher; when the old halls of the castles and manor- 
houses were thrown open at daylight; when the tables 
were covered with brawn, and beef, and humming ale; 
when the harp and the carol resounded all day long, and 
when rich and poor were alike welcome to enter and 
make merry. " Our old games and local customs," said 
he, " had a great effect in making the peasant fond of his 
home, and the promotion of them by the gentry made 
him fond of his lord. They made the times merrier, and 
kinder, and better, and I can truly say, with one of our 
old poets: 

* I like them well — the curious preciseness 
And all-pretended gravity of those 
That seek to banish hence these harmless sports, 
Have thrust away much ancient honesty.' " 



Christmas Day 43 

"The nation," continued he, "is altered; we have al- 
most lost our simple true-hearted peasantry. They have 
broken asunder from tne higher classes, and seem to 
think their interests are separate. They have become 
too knowing, and begin to read newspapers, listen to 
alehouse politicians, and talk of reform. I think one 
mode to keep them in good humour in these hard times 
would be for the nobility and gentry to pass more time on 
their estates, mingle more among the country people, and 
set the merry old English games going again." 

Such was the good squire's project for mitigating pub- 
lic discontent: and, indeed, he had once attempted to 
put his doctrine in practice, and a few years before had 
kept open house during the holidays in the old style. 
The country people, however, did not understand how to 
play their parts in the scene of hospitality; many uncouth 
circumstances occurred; the manor was overrun by all 
the vagrants of the country, and more beggars drawn 
into the neighbourhood in one week than the parish 
officers could get rid of in a year. Since then, he had 
contented himself with inviting the decent part of the 
neighbouring peasantry to call at the hall on Christmas 
day, and with distributing beef, and bread, and ale, 
among the poor, that they might make merry in their 
own dwellings. 

We had not been long home when the sound of music 
was heard from a distance. A band of country lads 
without coats, their shirt sleeves fancifully tied with rib- 
bons, their hats decorated with greens and clubs in their 
hands, were seen advancing up the avenue, followed by a 
large number of villagers and peasantry. They stopped 
before the hall door, where the music struck up a peculiar 
air, and tjtie kds performed a curious and intricate 



44 Essays Every Child Should Know 

dance, advancing, retreating, and striking their clubs 
together, keeping exact time to the music; while one, 
whimsically crowned with a fox's skin, the tail of which 
flaunted down his back, kept capering round the skirts of 
the dance, and rattling a Christmas box with many antic 
gesticulations. 

The squire eyed this fanciful exhibition with great in- 
terest and delight, and gave me a full account of its ori- 
gin, which he traced to the times when the Romans held 
possession of the island; plainly proving that this was 
a lineal descendant of the sword dance of the ancients. 
" It was now," he said, "nearly extinct, but he had acci- 
dentally met with traces of it in the neighbourhood, and 
had encouraged its revival; though, to tell the truth, it 
was too apt to be followed up by the rough cudgel play, 
and broken heads in the evening." 

After the dance was concluded, the whole party was 
entertained with brawn and beef, and stout home-brewed. 
The squire himself mingled among the rustics, and was 
received with awkward demonstrations of deference and 
regard. It is true I perceived two or three of the younger 
peasants, as they were raising their tankards to their 
mouths, when the squire's back was turned, making 
something of a grimace, and giving each other the wink; 
but the moment they caught my eye they pulled grave 
faces, and were exceedingly demure. With Master 
Simon, however, they all seemed more at their ease. His 
varied occupations and amusements had made him well 
known throughout the neighbourhood. He was a visitor 
at every farmhouse and cottage; gossiped with the farmers 
and their wives; romped with their daughters; and, like 
that type of a vagrant bachelor, the bumblebee, tolled the 
sweets from all the rosy lips of the country round. 



Christmas Day 45 

The bashfulness of the guests soon gave way before 
good cheer and affabihty. There is something genuine 
and affectionate in the gaiety of the lower orders, when 
it is excited by the bounty and familiarity of those above 
them; the warm glow of gratitude enters into their mirth, 
and a kind word or a small pleasantry frankly uttered by 
a patron, gladdens the heart of the dependant more than 
oil and wine. When the squire had retired, the merri- 
ment increased, and there was much joking and laughter, 
particularly between Master Simon and a hale, ruddy- 
faced, white-headed farmer, who appeared to be the wit 
of the village; for I observed all his companions to wait 
with open mouths for his retorts, and burst into a gra- 
tuitous laugh before they could well understand them. 

The whole house indeed seemed abandoned to merri- 
ment: as I passed to my room to dress for dinner, I 
heard the sound of music in a small court, and looking 
through a window that commanded it, I perceived a 
band of wandering musicians, with pandean pipes and 
tambourine; a pretty coquettish housemaid was dancing 
a jig with a smart country lad, while several of the other 
servants were looking on. In the midst of her sport the 
girl caught a glimpse of my face at the window, and, 
colouring up, ran off with an air of roguish affected 
confusion. 

— Washington Irving. 



VI 

STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

TO A homeless man, who has no spot on this wide 
world which he can truly call his own, there is 
a momentary feeling of something like independence 
and territorial consequence, when, after a weary day's 
travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, 
and stretches himself before an inn fire. Let the world 
without go as it may; let kingdoms rise or fall, so long 
as he has the wherewithal to pay his bill, he is, for the 
time being, the very monarch of all he surveys. The 
arm-chair is his throne, the poker his sceptre, and the 
little parlour, some twelve feet square, his undisputed 
empire. It is a morsel of certainty, snatched from the 
midst of the uncertainties of life; it is a sunny moment 
gleaming out kindly on a cloudy day: and he who has 
advanced some way on the pilgrimage of existence, knows 
the importance of husbanding even morsels and moments 
of enjoyment. " Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn ? " 
thought I, as I gave the fire a stir, lolled back in my 
elbow-chair, and cast a complacent look about the little 
parlour of the Red Horse, at Stratford-on-Avon. 

The words of sweet Shakespeare were just passing 
through my mind as the clock struck midnight from the 
tower of the church in which he lies buried. There 
was a gentle tap at the door, and a pretty chambermaid, 
putting in her smiling face, inquired, with a hesitating 
air, whether I had rung. I understood it as a modest 

46 



Stratjord-on-Avon 47 

hint that it was time to retire. My dream of absolute 
dominion was at an end; so abdicating my throne, Hke 
a prudent potentate, to avoid being deposed, and putting 
the Stratford Guide-Book under my arm, as a pillow 
companion, I went to bed, and dreamt all night of Shake- 
speare, the jubilee, and David Garrick. 

The next morning was one of those quickening morn- 
ings which we sometimes have in early spring; for it was 
about the middle of March. The chills of a long winter 
had suddenly given way; the north wind had spent its 
last gasp; and a mild air came stealing from the west, 
breathing the breath of life into nature, and wooing every 
bud and flower to burst forth into fragrance and beauty. 

I had come to Stratford on a poetical pilgrimage. My 
first visit was to the house where Shakespeare was born, 
and where, according to tradition, he was brought up to 
his father's craft of wool-combing. It is a small, mean- 
looking edifice of wood and plaster, a true nestling-place 
of genius, which seems to delight in hatching its off- 
spring in by-corners. The walls of its squalid chambers 
are covered with names and inscriptions in every lan- 
guage, by pilgrims of all nations, ranks, and conditions, 
from the prince to the peasant; and present a simple, 
but striking instance of the spontaneous and universal 
homage of mankind to the great poet of nature. 

The house is shown by a garrulous old lady, in a frosty 
red face, lighted up by a cold blue anxious eye, and gar- 
nished with artificial locks of flaxen hair, curling from 
under an exceedingly dirty cap. She was peculiarly as- 
siduous in exhibiting the relics with which this, like all 
other celebrated shrines, abounds. There was the shat- 
tered stock of the very match-lock with which Shake- 
speare shot the deer, on his poaching exploits. There, 



48 Essays Every Child Should Know 

too, was his tobacco-box; which proves that he was a 
rival smoker of Sir Walter Raleigh: the sword also with 
which he played Hamlet; and the identical lantern with 
which Friar Laurence discovered Romeo and Juliet at 
the tomb! There was an ample supply also of Shake- 
speare's mulberry-tree, which seems to have as extraor- 
dinary powers of self-multiplication as the wood of the 
true cross; of which there is enough extant to build a 
ship of the line. 

The most favourite object of curiosity, however, is 
Shakespeare's chair. It stands in the chimney nook of a 
small gloomy chamber, just behind what was his father's 
shop. Here he may many a time have sat when a boy, 
watching the slowly revolving spit with all the longing 
of an urchin; or of an evening, listening to the cronies 
and gossips of Stratford, dealing forth church-yard tales 
and legendary anecdotes of the troublesome times of Eng- 
land. In this chair it is the custom of every one that 
visits the house to sit: whether this be done with the 
hope of imbibing any of the inspiration of the bard I am 
at a loss to say, I merely mention the fact; and mine 
hostess privately assured me, that, though built of solid 
oak, such was the fervent zeal of devotees, that the chair 
had to be new bottomed at least once in three years. It 
is worthy of notice also, in the history of this extraordinary 
chair, that it partakes something of the volatile nature 
of the Santa Casa of Loretto, or the flying chair of the 
Arabian enchanter; for though sold some few years 
since to a northern princess, yet, strange to tell, it has 
found its way back again to the old chimney corner. 

I am always of easy faith in such matters, and am ever 
willing to be deceived, where the deceit is pleasant and 
costs nothing. I am therefore a ready believer in relics, 



Stratjord-on-Avon 49 

legends, and local anecdotes of goblins and great men; 
and would advise all travellers who travel for their grati- 
fication to be the same. What is it to us, whether these 
stories be true or false, so long as we can persuade our- 
selves into the belief of them, and enjoy all the charm of 
the reality? There is nothing like resolute good- 
humoured credulity in these matters; and on this occasion 
I went even so far as willingly to believe the claims of 
mine hostess to a lineal descent from the poet, when, 
luckily, for my faith, she put into my hands a play of her 
own composition, which set all belief in her consanguinity 
at defiance. 

From the birth-place of Shakespeare a few paces 
brought me to his grave. He lies buried in the chancel 
of the parish church, a large and venerable pile, moulder- 
ing with age, but richly ornamented. It stands on the 
banks of the Avon, on an embowered point, and separated 
by adjoining gardens from the suburbs of the town. 
Its situation is quiet and retired: the river runs murmur- 
ing at the foot of the churchyard, and the elms which 
grow upon its banks droop their branches into its clear 
bosom. An avenue of limes, the boughs of which are 
curiously interlaced, so as to form in summer an arched 
way of foliage, leads up from the gate of the yard to the 
church porch. The graves are overgrown with grass; 
the gray tombstones, some of them nearly sunk into the 
earth, are half covered with moss, which has likewise 
tinted the reverend old building. Small birds have 
built their nests among the cornices and fissures of the 
walls, and keep up a continual flutter and chirping; and 
rooks are sailing and cawing about its lofty gray spire. 

In the course of my rambles I met with the gray- 
headed sexton, Edmonds, and accompanied him home 



50 Essays Every Child Should Know 

to get the key of the church. He had Hved in Stratford, 
man and boy, for eighty years, and seemed still to con- 
sider himself a vigorous man, with the trivial exception 
that he had nearly lost the use of his legs for a few years 
past. His dwelling was a cottage, looking out upon the 
Avon and its bordering meadows; and was a picture of 
that neatness, order, and comfort, which pervade the 
humblest dwellings in this country. A low white-washed 
room, with a stone floor carefully scrubbed, served for 
parlour, kitchen, and hall. Rows of pewter and earthen 
dishes glittered along the dresser. On an old oaken 
table, well rubbed and polished, lay the family Bible and 
prayer-book, and the drawer contained the family 
library, composed of about half a score of well-thumbed 
volumes. An ancient clock, that important article of 
cottage furniture, ticked on the opposite side of the room, 
with a bright warming-pan hanging on one side of it, and 
the old man's horn-handled Sunday cane on the other. 
The fireplace, as usual, was wide and deep enough to ad- 
mit a gossip knot within its jambs. In one corner sat the 
old man's granddaughter sewing, a pretty blue-eyed girl, 
— and in the opposite corner was a superannuated crony, 
whom he addressed by the name of John Ange, and who, 
I found, had been his companion from childhood. 
They had played together in infancy; they had worked 
together in manhood; they were now tottering about and 
gossiping away the evening of life; and in a short time 
they will probably be buried together in the neighbour- 
ing churchyard. It is not often that we see two streams 
of existence running thus evenly and tranquilly side by 
side; it is only in such quiet ^' bosom scenes" of life that 
they are to be met with. 

I had hoped to gather some traditionary anecdotes of 



Stratjord-on-Avon 51 

the bard from these ancient chroniclers; but they had 
nothing new to impart. The long interval during which 
Shakespeare's writings lay in comparative neglect has 
spread its shadow over his history; and it is his good or 
evil lot that scarcely anything remains to his biographers 
but a scanty handful of conjectures. 

The sexton and his companion had been employed as 
carpenters on the preparations for the celebrated Strat- 
ford jubilee, and they remembered Garrick, the prime 
mover of the fete, who superintended the arrangements, 
and who, according to the sexton, was "a short punch 
man, very lively and bustling." John Ange had assisted 
also in cutting down Shakespeare's mulberry tree, of 
which he had a morsel in his pocket for sale; no doubt a 
sovereign quickener of literary conception. 

I was grieved to hear these two worthy wights speak 
very dubiously of the eloquent dame who shows the 
Shakespeare house. John Ange shook his head when I 
mentioned her valuable collection of relics, particularly 
her remains of the mulberry tree; and the old sexton 
even expressed a doubt as to Shakespeare having been 
born in her house. I soon discovered that he looked 
upon her mansion with an evil eye, as a rival to the poet's 
tomb; the latter having comparatively but few visitors. 
Thus it is that historians differ at the very outset, and 
mere pebbles make the stream of truth diverge into 
different channels even at the fountain head. 

We approached the church through the avenue of 
limes, and entered by a Gothic porch, highly ornamented 
with carved doors of massive oak. The interior is spa- 
cious, and the architecture and embellishments superior 
to those of most country churches. There are several 
ancient monuments of nobility and gentry, over some 



52 Essays Every Child Should Know 

of which hang funeral escutcheons, and banners drop- 
ping piecemeal from the walls. The tomb of Shake- 
speare is in the chancel. The place is solemn and sepul- 
chral. Tall elms wave before the pointed windows, and 
the Avon, which runs at a short distance from the walls, 
keeps up a low perpetual murmur. A flat stone marks 
the spot where the bard is buried. There are four lines 
inscribed on it, said to have been written by himself, and 
which have in them something extremely awful. If they 
are indeed his own, they show that solicitude about the 
quiet of the grave, which seems natural to fine sensibili- 
ties and thoughtful minds. 

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare 
To dig the dust enclosed here. 
Blessed be he that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones." 

Just over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust 
of Shakespeare, put up shortly after his death, and con- 
sidered as a resemblance. The aspect is pleasant and 
serene, with a finely-arched forehead; and I thought 
I could read in it clear indications of that cheerful, social 
disposition, by which he was as much characterised 
among his contemporaries as by the vastness of his genius. 
The inscription mentions his age at the time of his 
decease — fifty-three years; an untimely death for the 
world: for what fruit might not have been expected 
from the golden autumn of such a mind, sheltered as it 
was from the stormy vicissitudes of life, and flourishing 
in the sunshine of popular and royal favour. 

The inscription on the tombstone has not been without 
its effect. It has prevented the removal of his remains 
from the bosom of his native place to Westminster Abbey, 



Stratjord-on-Avon 53 

which was at one time contemplated. A few years 
since also, as some labourers were digging to make an 
adjoining vault, the earth caved in, so as to leave a vacant 
space almost like an arch, through which one might 
have reached into his grave. No one, however, presumed 
to meddle with his remains so awfully guarded by a 
malediction; and lest any of the idle or the curious, or 
any collector of relics, should be tempted to commit 
depredations, the old sexton kept watch over the place 
for two days, until the vault was finished and the aper- 
ture closed again. He told me that he had made bold to 
look in at the hole, but could see neither coffin nor bones; 
nothing but dust. It was something, I thought, to have 
seen the dust of Shakespeare. 

Next to this grave are those of his wife, his favourite 
daughter, Mrs. Hall, and others of his family. On a 
tomb close by, also, is a full-length effigy of his old friend 
John Combe of usurious memory; on whom he is said 
to have written a ludicrous epitaph. There are other 
monuments around, but the mind refuses to dwell on 
anything that is not connected with Shakespeare. His 
idea pervades the place; the whole pile seems but as 
his mausoleum. The feelings, no longer checked and 
thwarted by doubt, here indulge in perfect confidence: 
other traces of him may be false or dubious, but here is 
palpable evidence and absolute certainty. As I trod the 
sounding pavement, there was something intense and 
thrilling in the idea, that, in very truth, the remains of 
Shakespeare were mouldering beneath my feet. It was 
a long time before I could prevail upon myself to leave 
the place; and as I passed through the churchyard, I 
plucked a branch from one of the yew trees, the only 
relic that I have brought from Stratford. 



54 Essays Every Child Should Know 

I had now visited the usual objects of a pilgrim's devo- 
tion, but I had a desire to see the old family seat of the 
Lucys, at Charlecot, and to ramble through the park where 
Shakespeare, in company with some of the roysterers 
of Stratford, committed his youthful offence of deer- 
stealing. In this hare-brained exploit we are told that 
he was taken prisoner, and carried to the keeper's lodge, 
where he remained all night in doleful captivity. When 
brought into the presence of Sir Thomas Lucy, his treat- 
ment must have been galling and humiliating; for it so 
wrought upon his spirit as to produce a rough pasqui- 
nade, which was affixed to the park gate at Charlecot. 

This flagitious attack upon the dignity of the knight so 
incensed him, that he applied to a lawyer at Warwick to 
put the severity of the laws in force against the rhyming 
deer-stalker. Shakespeare did not wait to brave the 
united puissance of a knight of the shire and a country 
attorney. He forthwith abandoned the pleasant banks of 
the Avon and his paternal trade; wandered away to Lon- 
don; became a hanger-on to the theatres; then an actor; 
and, finally, wrote for the stage; and thus, through the 
persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy, Stratford lost an indif- 
ferent wool-comber, and the world gained an immortal 
poet. He retained, however, for a long time, a sense of 
the harsh treatment of the Lord of Charlecot, and re- 
venged himself in his writings; but in the sportive way 
of a good-natured mind. Sir Thomas is said to be the 
original Justice Shallow, and the satire is slyly fixed 
upon him by the justice's armorial bearings, which, like 
those of the knight, had white luces in the quarterings. 

Various attempts have been made by his biographers 
to soften and explain away this early transgression of 
the poet; but I look upon it as one of those thoughtless 



Stratjord-on-Avon 55 

exploits natural to his situation and turn of mind. 
Shakespeare, when young, had doubtless all the wildness 
and irregularity of an ardent, undisciplined, and undi- 
rected genius. The poetic temperament has naturally 
something in it of the vagabond. When left to itself it 
runs loosely and wildly, and delights in every thing eccen- 
tric and licentious. It is often a turn-up of a die, in 
the gambling freaks of fate, whether a natural genius 
shall turn out a great rogue or a great poet; and had 
not Shakespeare's mind fortunately taken a literary bias, 
he might have as daringly transcended all civil, as he has 
all dramatic laws. 

I have little doubt that, in early life, when running, 
like an unbroken colt, about the neighbourhood of Strat- 
ford, he was to be found in the company of all kinds of 
odd anomalous characters; that he associated with all 
the madcaps of the place, and was one of those unlucky 
urchins, at mention of whom old men shake their heads, 
and predict that they will one day come to the gallows. 
To him the poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy's park was 
doubtless like a foray to a Scottish knight, and struck 
his eager, and, as yet untamed, imagination, as something 
delightfully adventurous. 

The old mansion of Charlecot and its surrounding 
park still remain in the possession of the Lucy family, 
and are peculiarly interesting, from being connected with 
this whimsical but eventful circumstance in the scanty 
history of the bard. As the house stood but little more 
than three miles' distance from Stratford, I resolved to 
pay it a pedestrian visit, that I might stroll leisurely 
through some of those scenes from which Shakespeare 
must have derived his earliest ideas of rural imagery. 

The country was yet naked and leafless; but English 



56 Essays Every Child Should Know 

scenery is always verdant, and the sudden change in the 
temperature of the weather was surprising in its quicken- 
ing effects upon the landscape. It was inspiring and ani- 
mating to witness this first awakening of spring; to feel 
its warm breath stealing over the senses; to see the 
moist mellow earth beginning to put forth the green 
sprout and the tender blade: and the trees and shrubs, 
in their reviving tints and bursting buds, giving the 
promise of returning foliage and flower. The cold 
snow-drop, that little borderer on the skirts of winter, 
was to be seen with its chaste white blossoms in the small 
gardens before the cottages. The bleating of the new- 
dropt lambs was faintly heard from the fields. The 
sparrow twittered about the thatched eaves and budding 
hedges; the robin threw a livelier note into his late 
querulous wintry strain; and the lark, springing up 
from the reeking bosom of the meadow, towered away 
into the bright fleecy cloud, pouring forth torrents of 
melody. As I watched the little songster, mounting up 
higher and higher, until his body was a mere speck on 
the white bosom of the cloud, while the ear was still 
filled with his music, it called to mind Shakespeare's 
exquisite little song in Cymbeline: 

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, 

And Phoebus 'gins arise, 
His steeds to water at those springs, 

On chaliced flowers that lies. 

And winking mary-buds begin 

To ope their golden eyes; 
With every thing that pretty bin, 

My lady sweet arise! 

Indeed the whole country about here is poetic ground: 
every thing is associated with the idea of Shakespeare. 



Stratjord-on-Avon 57 

Every old cottage that I saw, I fancied into some resort 
of his boyhood, where he had acquired his intimate 
knowledge of rustic Ufe and manners, and heard those 
legendary tales and wild superstitions which he has 
woven like witchcraft into his dramas. For in his time, 
we are told, it was a popular amusement in winter even- 
ings " to sA round the fire, and tell merry tales of errant 
knights, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, 
thieves, cheaters, witches, fairies, goblins, and friars." 

My route for a part of the way lay in sight of the Avon 
which made a variety of the most fancy doublings and 
windings through a wide and fertile valley; sometimes 
glittering from among willows, which fringed its borders; 
sometimes disappearing among groves, or beneath green 
banks; and sometimes rambling out into full view, and 
making an azure sweep round a slope of meadow land. 
This beautiful bosom of country is called the Vale of the 
Red Horse. A distant line of undulating blue hills 
seems to be its boundary, whilst all the soft intervening 
landscape lies in a manner enchained in the silver links 
of the Avon. 

After pursuing the road for about three miles, I turned 
off into a footpath, which led along the borders of fields, 
and under hedgerows to a private gate of the park; there 
was a stile, however, for the benefit of the pedestrian; 
there being a public right of way through the grounds. 
I delight in these hospitable estates, in which every one 
has a kind of property — at least as far as the footpath is 
concerned. It in some measure reconciles a poor man to 
his lot, and, what is more, to the better lot of his neigh- 
bour, thus to have parks and pleasure-grounds thrown 
open for his recreation. He breathes the pure air as 
freely, and lolls as luxuriously under the shade, as the 



58 Essays Every Child Should Know 

lord of the soil; and if he has not the privilege of calling 
all that he sees his own, he has not, at the same time, the 
trouble of paying for it, and keeping it in order. 

I now found myself among noble avenues of oaks and 
elms, whose vast size bespoke the growth of centuries. 
The wind sounded solemnly among their branches, and 
the rooks cawed from their hereditary nests in the tree 
tops. The eye ranged through a long lessening vista, 
with nothing to interrupt the view but a distant statue; 
and a vagrant deer stalking like a shadow across the 
opening. 

There is something about these stately old avenues 
that has the effect of Gothic architecture, not merely 
from the pretended similarity of form, but from their 
bearing the evidence of long duration, and of having had 
their origin in a period of time with which we associate 
ideas of romantic grandeur. They betoken also the 
long-settled dignity, and proudly-concentrated indepen- 
dence of an ancient family ; and I have heard a worthy but 
aristocratic old friend observe, when speaking of the 
sumptuous palaces of modern gentry, that " money could 
do much with stone and mortar, but, thank Heaven, 
there was no such thing as suddenly building up an 
avenue of oaks." 

It was from wandering in early life among this rich 
scenery, and about the romantic solitudes of the adjoin- 
ing park of Fullbroke, which then formed a part of the 
Lucy estate, that some of Shakespeare's commentators 
have supposed he derived his noble forest meditations 
of Jaques, and the enchanting woodland pictures in " As 
You Like It." It is in lonely wanderings through such 
scenes, that the mind drinks deep but quiet draughts of 
inspiration, and becomes intensely sensible of the beauty 



Stratjord-on-Avon 59 

and majesty of nature. The imagination kindles into 
reverie and rapture; vague but exquisite images and 
ideas keep breaking upon it; and we revel in a mute and 
almost incommunicable luxury of thought. It was in 
some such mood, and perhaps under one of those very 
trees before me, which threw their broad shades 
over the grassy banks and quivering waters of the 
Avon, that the poet's fancy may have sallied forth 
into that little song which breathes the very soul of a 
rural voluptuary: 

Under the green wood tree. 
Who loves to lie with me, 
And tune his merry throat 
Unto the sweet bird's note, 
Come hither, come hither, come hither. 
Here shall he see 
No enemy, 
But winter and rough weather. 

I had now come in sight of the house. It is a large 
building of brick, with stone quoins, and is in the Gothic 
style of Queen Elizabeth's day, having been built in the 
first year of her reign. The exterior remains very nearly 
in its original state, and may be considered a fair speci- 
men of the residence of a wealthy country gentleman of 
those days. A great gateway opens from the park into a 
kind of courtyard in front of the house, ornamented with 
a grass-plot, shrubs, and flower-beds. The gateway is in 
imitation of the ancient barbican; being a kind of out- 
post, and flanked by towers; though evidently for mere 
ornament, instead of defence. The front of the house is 
completely in the old style; with stone-shafted case- 
ments, a great bow-window of heavy stone-work, and a 
portal with armorial bearings over it, carved in stone. 



6o Essays Every Child Should Know 

At each corner of the building is an octagon tower, 
surmounted by a gilt ball and weather-cock. 

The Avon, which winds through the park, makes a 
bend just at the foot of a gently-sloping bank, which 
sweeps down from the rear of the house. Large herds 
of deer were feeding or reposing upon its borders; and 
swans were sailing majestically upon its bosom. As I 
contemplated the venerable old mansion, I called to mind 
Falstaff's encomium on Justice Shallow's abode, and 
the affected indifference and real vanity of the latter: 

Falstaff. You have a goodly dwelling and a rich. 
Shallow. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir 
John: — marry, good air." 

What may have been the joviality of the old mansion 
in the days of Shakespeare, it had now an air of stillness 
and solitude. The great iron gateway that opened into 
the courtyard was locked; there was no show of servants 
bustling about the place; the deer gazed quietly at me 
as I passed, being no longer harried by the moss-troopers 
of Stratford. The only sign of domestic life that I met 
with was a white cat, stealing with wary look and stealthy 
pace towards the stables, as if on some nefarious ex- 
pedition. I must not omit to mention the carcass of a 
scoundrel crow which I saw suspended against the barn 
wall, as it shows that the Lucys still inherit that lordly 
abhorrence of poachers, and maintain that rigorous 
exercise of territorial power which was so strenuously 
manifested in the case of the bard. 

After prowling about for some time, I at length found 
my way to a lateral portal, which was the every-day 
entrance to the mansion. I was courteously received 
by a worthy old housekeeper, who, with the civility and 



Stratjord on-Avon 6i 

communicativeness of her order, showed me the interior 
of the house. The greater part has undergone alterations, 
and been adapted to modern tastes and modes of living; 
there is a fine old oaken staircase; and the great hall, 
that noble feature in an ancient manor-house, still re- 
tains much of the appearance it must have had in the 
days of Shakespeare. The ceiling is arched and lofty; 
and at one end is a gallery in which stands an organ. 
The weapons and trophies of the chase, which formerly 
adorned the hall of a country gentleman, have made way 
for family portraits. There is a wide hospitable fire- 
place, calculated for an ample old-fashioned wood fire, 
formerly the rallying-place of winter festivity. On the 
opposite side of the hall is the huge Gothic bow-window, 
with stone shafts, which looks out upon the courtyard. 
Here are emblazoned in stained glass the armorial bear- 
ings of the Lucy family for many generations, some being 
dated in 1558. I was deHghted to observe in the quar- 
terings the three white luces, by which the character of 
Sir Thomas was first identified with that of Justice Shal- 
low. They are mentioned in the first scene of the ^* Merry 
Wives of Windsor," where the Justice is in a rage with 
Falstaff for having "beaten his men, killed his deer, and 
broken into his lodge." The poet had no doubt the 
offences of himself and his comrades in mind at the time, 
and we may suppose the family pride and vindictive 
threats of the puissant Shallow to be a caricature of the 
pompous indignation of Sir Thomas. 

Shallow. Sir Hugh, persuade me not: I will make a Star- 
Chamber matter of it; if he were twenty John Falstaffs, he shall 
not abuse Sir Robert Shallow, Esq. 

Slender. In the county of Gloster, justice of peace, and coram. 

Shallow. Ay, cousin Slender, and custalorum. 



62 Essays Every Child Should Know 

Slender. Ay, and ratalorum too, and a gentleman born, master 
parson; who writes himself Armigero in any bill, warrant, quit- 
tance, or obligation, Armigero. 

Shallow. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three 
hundred years. 

Slender. All his successors gone before him have done't, and 
all his ancestors that come after him may; they may give the 
dozen white luces in their coat. . . . 

Shallow. The council shall hear it; it is a riot. 

Evans. It is not meet the council hear of a riot; there is no 
fear of Got in a riot; the council, hear you, shall desire to hear the 
fear of Got, and not to hear a riot; take vour vizaments in that. 

Shallow. Ha! o' my life, if I were young again, the sword 
should end it! 

Near the window thus emblazoned hung a portrait by 
Sir Peter Lely, of one of the Lucy family, a great beauty 
of the time of Charles the Second: the old housekeeper 
shook her head as she pointed to the picture, and in- 
formed me that this lady had been sadly addicted to 
cards, and had gambled away a great portion of the fam- 
ily estate, among which was that part of the park where 
Shakespeare and his comrades had killed the deer. The 
lands thus lost had not been entirely regained by the 
family even at the present day. It is but justice to this 
recreant dame to confess that she had a surpassingly fine 
hand and arm. 

The picture which most attracted my attention was a 
great painting over the fireplace, containing likenesses 
of Sir Thomas Lucy and his family, who inhabited the 
hall in the latter part of Shakespeare's lifetime. I at 
first thought that it was the vindictive knight himself, 
but the housekeeper assured me that it was his son, the 
only likeness extant of the former being an effigy upon 
his tomb in the church of the neighbouring hamlet of 
Charlecot. The picture gives a lively idea of the costume 



Stratjord-on-Avon 63 

and manners of the time. Sir Thomas is dressed in ruff 
and doublet; white shoes with roses in them; and has a 
peaked yellow, or, as Master Slender would say, *' a cane- 
coloured beard.'* His lady is seated on the opposite side 
of the picture, in wide ruff and long stomacher, and the 
children have a most venerable stiffness and formality of 
dress. Hounds and spaniels are mingled in the family 
group; a hawk is seated on his perch in the foreground, 
and one of the children holds a bow; — all intimating the 
knight's skill in hunting, hawking, and archery — so in- 
dispensable to an accomplished gentleman in those days. 
I regretted to find that the ancient furniture of the hall 
had disappeared; for I had hoped to meet with the 
stately elbow-chair of carved oak, in which the country 
squire of former days was wont to sway the sceptre of 
empire over his rural domains; and in which it might be 
presumed the redoubted Sir Thomas sat enthroned in 
awful state when the recreant Shakespeare was brought 
before him. As I like to deck out pictures for my own 
entertainment, I pleased myself wath the idea that this 
very hall had been the scene of the unlucky bard's exam- 
ination on the morning after his captivity in the lodge. 
I fancied to myself the rural potentate, surrounded by 
his body-guard of butler, pages, and blue-coated serving- 
men, with their badges; while the luckless culprit was 
brought in, forlorn and chopfallen, in the custody of 
gamekeepers, huntsmen, and whippers-in, and followed 
by a rabble rout of country clowns. I fancied bright 
faces of curious housemaids peeping from the half-opened 
doors; while from the gallery the fair daughters of the 
knight leaned gracefully forward, eyeing the youthful 
prisoner with that pity "that dwells in womanhood." 
Who would have thought that this poor varlet, thus 



64 Essays Every Child Should Know 

trembling before the brief authority of a country squire, 
and the sport of rustic boors, was soon to become the 
delight of princes, the theme of all tongues and ages, the 
dictator to the human mind, and was to confer immor- 
tality on his oppressor by a caricature and a lampoon ! 

I was now invited by the butler to walk into the gar- 
den, and I felt inclined to visit the orchard and arbour 
where the justice treated Sir John Falstaff and Cousin 
Slender " to a last year's pippin of his own grafting, with 
a dish of caraways"; but I had already spent so much 
of the day in my ramblings that I was obliged to give up 
any further investigations. When about to take my 
leave I was gratified by the civil entreaties of the house- 
keeper and butler, that I would take some refreshment: 
an instance of good old hospitality which, I grieve to say, 
we castle-hunters seldom meet with in modern days. I 
make no doubt it is a virtue which the present repre- 
sentative of the Lucys inherits from his ancestors; for 
Shakespeare, even in his caricature, makes Justice Shal- 
low importunate in this respect, as witness his pressing 
instances to Falstaff. 

"By cock and pye, sir, you shall not away to-night. ... I 
will not excuse you; you shall not be excused; excuses shall not 
be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve; you shall not be 
excused. . . . Some pigeons, Davy; a couple of short-legged 
hens; a joint of mutton; and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, 
tell William Cook." 

I now bade a reluctant farewell to the old hall. My 
mind had become so completely possessed by the im- 
aginary scenes and characters connected with it, that I 
seemed to be actually living among them. Everything 
brought them as it were before my eyes; and as the 
door of the dining-room opened, I almost expected to 



Stratjord-on-Avon 65 

hear the feeble voice of Master Silence quavering forth 
his favourite ditty : 

*"Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all, 
And welcome merry Shrove-tide!" 

On returning to my inn, I could not but reflect on the 
singular gift of the poet; to be able thus to spread the 
magic of his mind over the very face of nature; to give 
to things and places a charm and character not their own, 
and to turn this "working-day world" into a perfect fairy 
land. He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell oper- 
ates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and 
the heart. Under the wizard influence of Shakespeare I 
had been walking all day in a complete delusion. I had 
surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, 
which tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. 
I had been surrounded with fancied beings; with mere 
airy nothings, conjured up by poetic power; yet which, 
to me, had all the charm of reality. I had heard Jaques 
soliloquise beneath his oak; had beheld the fair Rosa- 
lind and her companion adventuring through the wood- 
lands; and, above all, had been once more present in 
spirit with fat Jack Falstaff and his contemporaries, from 
the august Justice Shallow down to the gentle Master 
Slender and the sweet Anne Page. Ten thousand 
honours and blessings on the bard who has thus gilded 
the dull realities of life with innocent illusions; who has 
spread exquisite and unbought pleasures in my chequered 
path; and beguiled my spirit in many a lonely hour, with 
all the cordial and cheerful sympathies of social life! 

As I crossed the bridge over the Avon on my return, I 
paused to contemplate the distant church in which the 
poet lies buried, and could not but exult in the 
malediction, which has kept his ashes undisturbed in its 



66 Essays Every Child Should Know 

quiet and hallowed vaults. What honour could his name 
have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship 
with the epitaphs and escutcheons and venal eulogiums 
of a titled multitude ? What would a crowded corner in 
Westminster Abbey have been, compared with this 
reverend pile, which seems to stand in beautiful lone- 
liness as his sole mausoleum! The solicitude about the 
grave may be but the offspring of an over-wrought sen- 
sibility; but human nature is made up of foibles and 
prejudices; and its best and tenderest affections are 
mingled with these factitious feelings. He who has 
sought renown about the world, and has reaped a full 
harvest of worldly favour, will find, after all, that there 
is no love, no admiration, no applause, so sweet to the 
soul as that which springs up in his native place. It is 
there that he seeks to be gathered in peace and honour 
among his kindred and his early friends. And when the 
weary heart and failing head begin to warn him that the 
evening of life is drawing on, he turns as fondly as does 
the infant to the mother's arms to sink to sleep in the 
bosom of the scene of his childhood. 

How would it have cheered the spirit of the youthful 
bard when, wandering forth in disgrace upon a doubtful 
world, he cast back a heavy look upon his paternal home, 
could he have foreseen that, before many years, he should 
return to it covered with renown; that his name should 
become the boast and glory of his native place; that his 
ashes should be religiously guarded as its most precious 
treasure; and that its lessening spire, on which his eyes 
were fixed in tearful contemplation, should one day be- 
come the beacon, towering amidst the gentle landscape, 
to guide the literary pilgrim of every nation to his tomb ! 

— ^Washington Irving. 



VII 

SUNDAY AT HOME 

EVERY Sabbath morning in the summer time, I 
thrust back the curtain, to watch the sunrise 
stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my cham- 
ber window. First, the weather-cock begins to flash; 
then, a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next, 
it encroaches on the tower, and causes the index of the 
dial to glisten like gold as it points to the gilded figure 
of the hour. Now, the loftiest window gleams, and 
now the lower. The carved frame-work of the portal 
is marked strongly out. At length, the morning glory, 
in its descent from heaven, comes down the stone steps, 
one by one; and there stands the steeple, glowing with 
fresh radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide 
themselves among the nooks of the adjacent buildings. 
Methinks, though the same sun brightens it every fair 
morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of bright- 
ness for the Sabbath. 

By dwelling near a church, a person soon contracts 
an attachment for the edifice. We naturally personify 
it, and conceive its massy walls, and its dim emptiness, 
to be instinct with a calm, and meditative, and some- 
what melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands fore- 
most, in our thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses 
us as a giant, with a mind comprehensive and discrimi- 
nating enough to care for the great and small concerns 
of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks a moral to 

67 



68 Essays Every Child Should Know 

the few that think, it reminds thousands of busy indi- 
viduals of their separate and most secret affairs. It 
is the steeple, too, that flings abroad the hurried and 
irregular accents of general alarm; neither have glad- 
ness and festivity found a better utterance than by its 
tongue; and when the dead are slowly passing to their 
home, the steeple has a melancholy voice to bid them 
welcome. Yet, in spite of this connection with human 
interests, what a moral loneliness, on week days, broods 
round about its stately height! It has no kindred with 
the houses above which it towers; it looks down into 
the narrow thoroughfare, the lonelier, because the 
crowd are elbowing their passage at its base. A glance 
at the body of the church deepens this impression. 
Within, by the light of distant windows, amid refracted 
shadows, we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries, 
the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit, and the clock, 
which tells to solitude how time is passing. Time — 
where man lives not — what is it but eternity? And in 
the church, we might suppose, are garnered up, through- 
out the week, all thoughts and feelings that have reference 
to eternityp until the holy day comes round again, to let 
them forth. Might not, then, its more appropriate site 
be in the outskirts of the town, with space for old trees 
to wave around it, and throw their solemn shadows over 
a quiet green ? We will say more of this, hereafter. 

But, on the Sabbath, I watch the earliest sunshine 
and fancy that a holier brightness marks the day, when 
there shall be no buzz of voices on the exchange, nor 
traffic in the shops, nor crowd, nor business, anywhere 
but at church. Many have fancied so. For my own 
part, whether I see it scattered down among tangled 
woods, or beaming broad across the fields, or hemmed in 



Sunday at Home 69 

between brick buildings, or tracing out the figure of the 
casement on my chamber floor, still I recognise the Sab- 
bath sunshine. And ever let me recognise it! Some 
illusions, and this among them, are the shadows of great 
truths. Doubts may flit around me, or seem to close 
their evil wings, and settle down; but, so long as I imag- 
ine that the earth is hallowed, and the light of heaven 
retains its sanctity, on the Sabbath — while that blessed 
sunshine lives within me — never can my soul have lost 
the instinct of its faith. If it have gone astray, it will 
return again. 

I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths, from morn- 
ing till night, behind the curtain of my open window. 
Are they spent amiss? Every spot, so near the church 
as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple, 
should be deemed consecrated ground, to-day. With 
stronger truth be it said, that a devout heart may con- 
secrate a den of thieves, as an evil one may convert a 
temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has not such 
holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious potency. It 
must sufiSce, that, though my form be absent, my inner 
man goes constantly to church, while many, whose bodily 
presence fills the accustomed seats, have left their souls 
at home. But I am there, even before my friend, the 
sexton. At length, he comes — a man of kindly, but 
sombre aspect, in dark gray clothes, and hair of the same 
mixture — ^he comes and applies his key to the wide portal. 
Now, my thoughts may go in among the dusty pews, or 
ascend the pulpit, without sacrilege, but soon come forth 
again to enjoy the music of the bell. How glad, yet 
solemn too! All the steeples in town are talking together 
aloft in the sunny air, and rejoicing among themselves, 
while their spires point heavenward. Meantime, here 



7o Essays Every Child Should Know 

are the children assembling to the Sabbath-school, which 
is kept somewhere within the church. Often, while 
looking at the arched portal, I have been gladdened by 
the sight of a score of these little girls and boys, in pink, 
blue, yellow, and crimson frocks, bursting suddenly 
forth into the sunshine, like a swarm of gay butterflies 
that had been shut up in the solemn gloom. Or I might 
compare them to cherubs, haunting that holy place. 

About a quarter of an hour before the second ringing 
of the bell, individuals of the congregation begin to 
appear. The earliest is invariably an old woman in 
black, whose bent frame and rounded shoulders are 
evidently laden with some heavy afiliction, which she is 
eager to rest upon the altar. Would that the Sabbath 
came twice as often, for the sake of that sorrowful old 
soul! There is an elderly man, also, who arrives in 
good season, and leans against the corner of the tower, 
just within the line of its shadow, looking downward 
with a darksome brow. I sometimes fancy that the 
old woman is the happier of the two. After these, others 
drop in singly, and by twos and threes, either disappear- 
ing through the doorway, or taking their stand in its 
vicinity. At last, and always with an unexpected sen- 
sation, the bell turns in the steeple overhead, and throws 
out an irregular clangour, jarring the tower to its founda- 
tion. As if there were magic in the sound, the sidewalks 
of the street, both up and down along, are immediately 
thronged with two long lines of people, all converging 
hitherward, and streaming into the church. Perhaps 
the far-off roar of a coach draws nearer — a deeper thunder 
by its contrast with the surrounding stillness — until it 
sets down the wealthy worshippers at the portal, among 
their humblest brethren. Beyond that entrance, in 



Sunday at Home 71 

theory at least, there are no distinctions of earthly rank; 
nor, indeed, by the goodly apparel which is flaunting in 
the sun, would there seem to be such, on the hither side. 
Those pretty girls! Why will they disturb my pious 
meditation! Of all days in the week, they should strive 
to look least fascinating on the Sabbath, instead of 
heightening their mortal loveliness, as if to rival the 
blessed angels, and keep our thoughts from heaven. 
Were I the minister himself, I must needs look. One 
girl is white muslin from the waist upward, and black 
silk downward to her slippers; a second blushes, from 
topknot to shoetie, one universal scarlet; another shines 
of a pervading yellow, as if she had made a garment of 
the sunshine. The greater part, however, have adopted 
a milder cheerfulness of hue. Their veils, especially 
when the wind raises them, give a lightness to the general 
effect, and make them appear like airy phantoms, as they 
flit up the steps, and vanish into the sombre doorway. 
Nearly all — though it is very strange that I should know 
it — wear white stockings, white as snow, and neat slippers, 
laced crosswise with black ribbon, pretty high above 
the ankles. A white stocking is infinitely more effective 
than a black one. 

Here comes the clergyman, slow and solemn, in severe 
simplicity, needing no black silk gown to denote his 
office. His aspect claims my reverence, but cannot win 
my love. Were I to picture Saint Peter keeping fast the 
gate of heaven, and frowning, more stern than pitiful, 
on the wretched applicants, that face should be my study. 
By middle age, or sooner, the creed has generally wrought 
upon the heart, or been attempered by it. As the min- 
ister passes into the church the bell holds its iron tongue, 
and all the low murmur of the congregation dies away. 



72 Essays Every Child Should Know 

The gray sexton looks up and down the street, and then 
at my window curtain, where, through the small peep- 
hole, I half fancy that he has caught my eye. Now 
every loiterer has gone in, and the street lies asleep in 
the quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over 
me, and brings also an uneasy sense of neglected priv- 
ileges and duties. O, I ought to have gone to church! 
The bustle of the rising congregation reaches my ears. 
They are standing up to pray. Could I bring my heart 
into unison with those who are praying in yonder church, 
and lift it heavenward, with a fervour of supplication, 
but no distinct request, would not that be the safest 
kind of prayer ? ''Lord, look down upon me in mercy! " 
With that sentiment gushing from my soul, might I not 
leave all the rest to Him ? 

Hark! the hymn. This, at least, is a portion of the 
service which I can enjoy better than if I sat within the 
walls, where the full choir and the massive melody of the 
organ would fall with a weight upon me. At this distance 
it thrills through my frame and plays upon my heart- 
strings with a pleasure both of the sense and spirit. 
Heaven be praised, I know nothing of music as a science ; 
and the most elaborate harmonies, if they please me, 
please as simply as a nurse's lullaby. The strain has 
ceased, but prolongs itself in my mind with fanciful 
echoes till I start from my reverie, and find that the ser- 
mon has commenced. It is my misfortune seldom to 
fructify, in a regular way, by any but printed sermons. 
The first strong idea which the preacher utters gives birth 
to a train of thought, and leads me onward, step by step, 
quite out of hearing of the good man's voice, unless he be 
indeed a son of thunder. At my open window, catching 
now and then a sentence of the "parson's saw," I am as 



Sunday at Home 73 

well situated as at the foot of the pulpit stairs. The 
broken and scattered fragments of this one discourse 
will be the texts of many sermons, preached by those 
colleague pastors — colleagues, but often disputants — 
my Mind and Heart. The former pretends to be a 
scholar, and perplexes me with doctrinal points; the 
latter takes me on the score of feeling; and both, like 
several other preachers, spend their strength to very little 
purpose. I, their sole auditor, cannot always understand 
them. 

Suppose that a few hours have passed, and behold me 
still behind my curtain, just before the close of the after- 
noon service. The hour hand on the dial has passed 
beyond four o'clock. The declining sun is hidden 
behind the steeple, and throws its shadow straight across 
the street, so that my chamber is darkened as with a 
cloud. Around the church-door all is solitude, and an 
impenetrable obscurity beyond the threshold. A com- 
motion is heard. The seats are slammed down, and the 
pew-doors thrown back — a multitude of feet are trampling 
along the unseen aisles — and the congregation bursts 
suddenly through the portal. Foremost scampers a 
rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense and dark 
phalanx of grown men, and lastly, a crowd of females, 
with young children, and a few scattered husbands. 
This instantaneous outbreak of life into loneliness is one 
of the pleasantest scenes of the day. Some of the good 
people are rubbing their eyes, thereby intimating that 
they have been wrapped, as it were, in a sort of holy 
trance by the fervour of their devotion. There is a young 
man, a third-rate coxcomb, whose first care is always to 
flourish a white handkerchief, and brush the seat of a 
tight pair of black silk pantaloons, which shine as if 



74 Essays Every Child Should Know 

varnished. They must have been made of the stuff called 
''everlasting," or perhaps of the same piece as Christian's 
garments in the "Pilgrim's Progress," for he put them 
on two summers ago, and has not yet worn the gloss off. 
I have taken a great liking to those black silk pantaloons. 
But now, with nods and greetings among friends, each 
matron takes her husband's arm and paces gravely home- 
ward, while the girls also flutter away after arranging 
sunset walks with their favoured bachelors. The Sab- 
bath eve is the eve of love. At length the whole con- 
gregation is dispersed. No; here, with faces as glossy 
as black satin, come two sable ladies and a sable gentle- 
man, and close in their rear the minister, who softens his 
severe visage, and bestows a kind word on each. Poor 
souls! To them the most captivating picture of bliss in 
heaven is — ''There we shall be white!" 

All is solitude again. But, harkf — a broken war- 
bling of voices, and now, attuning its grandeur to their 
sweetness, a stately peal of the organ. Who are the 
choristers? Let me dream that the angels, who came 
down from heaven, this blessed morn, to blend them- 
selves with the worship of the truly good, are playing and 
singing their farewell to the earth. On the wings of 
that rich melody they were borne upward. 

This, gentle reader, is merely a flight of poetry. A 
few of the singing men and singing women had lingered 
behind their fellows, and raised their voices fitfully, and 
blew a careless note upon the organ. Yet, it lifted my 
soul higher than all their former strains. They are 
gone — the sons and daughters of music — and the gray 
sexton is just closing the portal. For six days more, 
there will be no face of man in the pews, and aisles, and 
galleries, nor a voice in the pulpit, nor music in the choir. 



Sunday at Home 75 

Was it worth while to rear this massive edifice, to be a 
desert in the heart of the town, and populous only for a 
few hours of each seventh day ? Oh, but the church is a 
symbol of religion. May its site, which was consecrated 
on the day when the first tree was felled, be kept holy 
forever, a spot of solitude and peace, amid the trouble 
and vanity of our week-day world! There is a moral, 
and a religion too, even in the silent walls. And may 
the steeple still point heavenward, and be decked with 
the hallowed sunshine of the Sabbath morn! 

— ^Nathaniel Hawthorne. 



VIII 
THE OLD APPLE DEALER 

THE lover of the moral picturesque may sometimes 
find what he seeks in a character which is never- 
theless of too negative a description to be seized upon 
and represented to the imaginative vision by word paint- 
ing. As an instance, I remember an old man who carries 
on a little trade of gingerbread and apples at the depot 
of one of our railroads. While awaiting the departure 
of the cars, my observation, flitting to and fro among the 
livelier characteristics of the scene, has often settled 
insensibly upon this almost hueless object. Thus, 
unconsciously to myself and unsuspected by him, I have 
studied the old apple dealer until he has become a nat- 
uralised citizen of my inner world. How little would he 
imagine — poor, neglected, friendless, unappreciated, and 
with little that demands appreciation — that the mental 
eye of an utter stranger has so often reverted to his figure! 
Many a noble form, many a beautiful face, has flitted 
before me and vanished like a shadow. It is a strange 
witchcraft whereby this faded and featureless old apple 
dealer has gained a settlement in my memory. 

He is a small man, with gray hair and gray stubble 
beard, and is invariably clad in a shabby surtout of snuff 
colour, closely buttoned, and half concealing a pair of 
gray pantaloons; the whole dress, though clean and 
entire, being evidently flimsy with much wear. His 
face, thin, withered, furrowed, and with features which 

76 



The Old Apple Dealer 77 



even age has failed to render impressive, has a frost-bitten 
aspect It is a moral frost which no physical warmth or 
comfortableness could counteract. The summer sun- 
shine may fling its white heat upon him, or the good fire 
of the depot room may make him the focus of its blaze 
on a winter's day; but all in vain; for still the old man 
looks as if he were in a frosty atmosphere, with scarcely 
warmth enough to keep life in the region about his heart. 
It is a patient, long-suffering, quiet, hopeless, shivering 
aspect He is not desperate-that, though 'ts etymology 
implies no more, would be too positive an express.on- 
but merely devoid of hope. As all his past hfe, probably, 
offers no spots of brightness to his memory, so he takes 
his present poverty and discomfort as entirely a mat er 
of course: he thinks it the definition of existence, so far 
as himself is concerned, to be poor, cold, and uncomfort- 
able It may be added, that time has not thrown 
dignity as a mantle over the old man's figure: there is 
nothing venerable about him: you pity him without a 

'"H?sits on a bench in the depot room; and before 
him, on the floor, are deposited two baskets of a capacity 
to contain his whole stock in trade. Across from one 
basket to the other extends a board, on which is displayed 
a plate of cakes and gingerbread, some ■^"f^'^' ^f !^J- 
cheeked apples, and a box containing variegated sticks 
ofcandy, t'o'gether with that delectable condiment known 
by child';enls Gibraltar rock, neatly done up in white 
paper. There is likewise a half-peck measure of cr^ckej 
LLts and two or three tin half pints or gills filled wth 
the nut kernels, ready for purchasers Such are the 
small commodities with which our old friend comes dady 
before the world, ministering to its petty needs and little 



78 Essays Every Child Should Know 

freaks of appetite, and seeking thence the solid subsistence 
— so far as he may subsist — of his Hfe. 

A slight observer would speak of the old man's qui- 
etude; but, on closer scrutiny, you discover that there 
is a continual unrest within him, which somewhat re- 
sembles the fluttering action of the nerves in a corpse 
from which life has recently departed. Though he 
never exhibits any violent action, and, indeed, might 
appear to be sitting quite still, yet you perceive, when his 
minuter peculiarities begin to be detected, that he is 
always making some little movement or other. He 
looks anxiously at this plate of cakes or pyramid of apples, 
and slightly alters their arrangement, with an evident 
idea that a great deal depends on their being disposed 
exactly thus and so. Then for a moment he gazes out 
of the window; then he shivers quietly and folds his 
arms across his breast, as if to draw himself closer within 
himself, and thus keep a flicker of warmth in his lone- 
some heart. Now he turns again to his merchandise 
of cakes, apples and candy, and discovers that this 
cake or that apple, or yonder stick of red and white 
candy, has somehow got out of its proper position. 
And is there not a walnut kernel too many or too 
few in one of those small tin measures? Again the 
whole arrangement appears to be settled to his mind; 
but, in the course of a minute or two, there will 
assuredly be something to set right. At times, by an 
indescribable shadow upon his features, too quiet, 
however, to be noticed until you are familiar with 
his ordinary aspect, the expression of frost-bitten, 
patient despondency becomes very touching. It seems 
as if just at that instant the suspicion occurred to him 
that, in his chill decline of life, earning scanty bread 



The Old Apple Dealer 79 

by selling cakes, apples, and candy, he is a very miser- 
able old fellow. 

But, if he think so, it is a mistake. He can never suffer 
the extreme of misery, because the tone of his whole 
being is too much subdued for him to feel anything 
acutely. 

Occasionally one of the passengers, to while away a 
tedious interval, approaches the old man, inspects the 
articles upon his board, and even peeps curiously into 
the two baskets. Another, striding to and fro along the 
room, throws a look at the apples and gingerbread at 
-every turn. A third, it may be of a more sensitive and 
delicate texture of being, glances shyly thitherward, 
cautious not to excite expectations of a purchaser while 
yet undetermined whether to buy. But there appears 
to be no need of such a scrupulous regard to our old 
friend's feelings. True, he is conscious of the remote 
possibility to sell a cake or an apple; but innumerable 
disappointments have rendered him so far a philosopher 
that, even if the purchased article should be returned, he 
will consider it altogether in the ordinary train of events. 
He speaks to none, and makes no sign of offering his 
wares to the public : not that he is deterred by pride, but 
by the certain conviction that such demonstrations would 
not increase his custom. Besides, this activity in business 
would require an energy that never could have been a 
characteristic of his almost passive disposition even in 
youth. Whenever an actual customer appears the old 
man looks up with a patient eye: if the price and the 
article are approved, he is ready to make change; other- 
wise his eyelids droop again sadly enough, but with no 
heavier despondency than before. He shivers, perhaps 
folds his lean arms around his lean body, and resumes the 



8o Essays Every Child Should Know 

lifelong, frozen patience in which consists his strength. 
Once in a while a schoolboy comes hastily up, places a 
cent or two upon the board, and takes up a cake, or stick 
of candy, or a measure of walnuts, or an apple as red 
cheeked as himself. There are no words as to price, 
that being as well known to the buyer as to the seller. 
The old apple dealer never speaks an unnecessary word: 
not that he is sullen and morose; but there is none of the 
cheeriness and briskness in him that stirs up people to 
talk. 

Not seldom he is greeted by some old neighbour, a man 
well to do in the world, who makes a civil, patronising 
observation about the weather; and then, by way of 
performing a charitable deed, begins to chaffer for an 
apple. Our friend presumes not on any past acquaint- 
ance; he makes the briefest possible response to all 
general remarks, and shrinks quietly into himself again. 
After every diminution of his stock he takes care to pro- 
duce from the basket another cake, another stick of 
candy, another apple, or another measure of walnuts, to 
supply the place of the article sold. Two or three 
attempts — or, perchance, half a dozen — are requisite 
before the board can be rearranged to his satisfaction. 
If he have received a silver coin, he waits till the pur- 
chaser is out of sight, then he examines it closely, and 
tries to bend it with his finger and thumb : finally he puts 
it into his waistcoat pocket with seemingly a gentle sigh. 
This sigh, so faint as to be hardly perceptible, and not 
expressive of any definite emotion, is the accompaniment 
and conclusion of all his actions. It is the symbol of the 
chillness and toi-pid melancholy of his old age, which 
only make themselves felt sensibly when his repose is 
slightly disturbed. 



The Old Apple Dealer 8i 

Our man of gingerbread and apples is not a specimen 
of the " needy man who has seen better days." Doubtless 
there have been better and brighter days in the far-off 
time of his youth; but none with so much sunshine of 
prosperity in them that the chill, the depression, the 
narrowness of means, in his declining years, can have 
come upon him by surprise. His life has all been of a 
piece. His subdued and nerveless boyhood prefigured 
his abortive prime, which likewise contained within 
itself the prophecy and image of his lean and torpid age. 
He was perhaps a mechanic, who never came to be a 
master in his craft, or a petty tradesman, rubbing on- 
ward between passably to do and poverty. Possibly he 
may look back to some brilliant epoch of his career when 
there were a hundred or two of dollars to his credit in the 
Savings Bank. Such must have been the extent of his 
better fortune — his little measure of this world's triumphs 
— all that he has known of success. A meek, down- 
cast, humble, uncomplaining creature, he probably has 
never felt himself entitled to more than so much of the 
gifts of Providence. Is it not still something that he has 
never held out his hand for charity, nor has yet been 
driven to that sad home and household of Earth's forlorn 
and broken-spirited children, the almshouse? He 
cherishes no quarrel, therefore, with his destiny, nor with 
the Author of it. All is as it should be. 

If, indeed, he have been bereaved of a son, a bold, 
energetic, vigorous young man, on whom the father's 
feeble nature leaned as on a staff of strength, in that case 
he may have felt a bitterness that could not otherwise have 
generated in his heart. But methinks the joy of possess- 
ing such a son and the agony of losing him would have 
developed the old man's moral and intellectual nature 



82 Essays Every Child Should Know 

to a much greater degree than we now find it. Intense 
grief appears to be as much out of keeping with his Hfe 
as fervid happiness. 

To confess the truth, it is not the easiest matter in the 
world to define and individuahse a character hke this 
which we are now handhng. The portrait must be so 
generally negative that the most delicate pencil is likely 
to spoil it by introducing some too positive tint. Every 
touch must be kept down, or else you destroy the sub- 
dued tone which is absolutely essential to the whole 
effect. Perhaps more may be done by contrast than by 
direct description. For this purpose I make use of 
another cake and candy merchant, who likewise infests 
the railroad depot. This latter worthy is a very smart 
and well-dressed boy of ten years old or thereabouts, 
who skips briskly hither and thither, addressing the 
passengers in a pert voice, yet with somewhat of good 
breeding in his tone and pronunciation. Now he has 
caught my eye, and skips across the room with a pretty 
pertness which I should like to correct with a box on the 
ear. " Any cake, sir ? any candy ? " 

No, none for me, my lad. I did but glance at your 
brisk figure in order to catch a reflected light and throw 
it upon your old rival yonder. 

Again, in order to invest my conception of the old 
man with a more decided sense of reality, I look at him 
in the very moment of intensest bustle, on the arrival of 
the cars. The shriek of the engine as it rushes into the 
car-house is the utterance of the steam fiend, whom 
man has subdued by magic spells and compels to serve 
as a beast of burden. He has skimmed rivers in his 
headlong rush, dashed through forests, plunged into the 
hearts of mountains, and glanced from the city to the 



The Old Apple Dealer 83 

desert-place, and again to a far-off city, with a meteoric 
progress, seen and out of sight, while his reverberating 
roar still fills the ear. The travellers swarm forth from 
the cars. All are full of the momentum which they have 
caught from their mode of conveyance. It seems as if 
the whole world, both morally and physically, were de- 
tached from its old standfasts and set in rapid motion. 
And, in the midst of this terrible activity, there sits the 
old man of gingerbread; so subdued, so hopeless, so 
without a stake in life, and yet not positively miserable — 
there he sits, the forlorn old creature, one chill and sombre 
day after another, gathering scanty coppers for his cakes, 
apples, and candy — there sits the old apple dealer, in his 
threadbare suit of snulBf colour and gray and his grizzly 
stubble beard. See! he folds his lean arms around his 
lean figure with that quiet sigh and that scarcely per- 
ceptible shiver which are the tokens of his inward state. 
I have him now. He and the steam fiend are each other's 
antipodes; the latter 's the type of all that go ahead, and 
the old man the representative of that melancholy class 
who, by some sad witchcraft, are doomed never to share 
in the world's exulting progress. Thus the contrast 
between mankind and this desolate brother becomes 
picturesque, and even sublime. 

And now farewell, old friend! Little do you suspect 
that a student of human life has made your character 
the theme of more than one solitary and thoughtful 
hour. Many would say that you have hardly individual- 
ity enough to be the object of your own self-love. How, 
then, can a stranger's eye detect anything in your mind 
and heart to study and to wonder at ? Yet, could I read 
but a tithe of what is written there, it would be a volume 
of deeper and more comprehensive import than all 



84 Essays Every Child Should Know 

the wisest mortals have given to the world; for the sound- 
less depths of the human soul and of eternity have an 
opening through your breast. God be praised, were it 
only for your sake that the present shapes of human 
existence are not cast in iron nor hewn in everlasting 
adamant, but moulded of the vapours that vanish away 
while the essence flits upward to the Infinite. There is a 
spiritual essence in this gray and lean old shape that 
shall flit upward too. Yes; doubtless there is a region 
where the lifelong shiver will pass away from his being, 
and that quiet sigh, which it has taken him so many 
years to breathe, will be brought to a close for good and 
all. 

— ^Nathaniel Hawthorne. 



IX 

REVOLT OK THE TARTARS 

THERE is no great event in modern history, or, per- 
haps it may be said more broadly, none in all 
history, from its earliest records, less generally known, or 
more striking to the imagination, than the flight east- 
wards of a principal Tartar nation across the boundless 
steppes of Asia in the latter half of the last century. The 
terminus a quo of this flight and the terminus ad quern are 
equally magnificent; the mightiest of Christian thrones 
being the one, the mightiest of Pagan the other. And 
the grandeur of these two terminal objects is harmo- 
niously supported by the romantic circumstances of the 
flight. In the abruptness of its commencement, and the 
fierce velocity of its execution, we read an expression of 
the wild barbaric character of those who conducted the 
movement. In the unity of purpose connecting this 
myriad of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a 
mark so remote, there is something which recalls to the 
mind those almighty instincts that propel the migrations 
of the swallow and the leeming, or the life-withering 
marches of the locust. Then, again, in the gloomy 
vengeance of Russia and her vast artillery, which hung 
upon the rear and the skirts of the fugitive vassals, we 
are reminded of Miltonic images — such, for instance, as 
that of the solitary hand pursuing through desert spaces 
and through ancient chaos a rebellious host, and over- 
taking with volleying thunders those who believed 

85 



86 Essays Every Child Should Know 

themselves already within the security of darkness and 
of distance. 

I shall have occasion, farther on, to compare this 
event with other great national catastrophes as to the 
magnitude of the suffering. But it may also challenge 
a comparison with similar events under another relation, 
viz., as to its dramatic capabilities. Few cases, perhaps, 
in romance or history, can sustain a close collation with 
this as to the complexity of its separate interests. The 
great outline of the enterprise, taken in connection with 
the operative motives, hidden or avowed, and the religious 
sanctions under which it was pursued, give to the case a 
triple character: ist, that of a conspiracy, with as close 
a unity in the incidents, and as much of a personal 
interest in the moving characters, with fine dramatic 
contrasts, as belongs to ''Venice Preserved," or to the 
*'Fiesco" of Schiller; 2dly, that of a great military expe- 
dition, offering the same romantic features of vast dis- 
tances to be traversed, vast reverses to be sustained, 
untried routes, enemies obscurely ascertained, and 
hardships too vaguely prefigured, which mark the Egyp- 
tian expedition of Cambyses — which mark the anabasis 
of the younger Cyrus, and the subsequent retreat of the 
ten thousand — which mark the Parthian expeditions of 
the Romans, especially those of Crassus and Julian — 
or (as more disastrous than any of them, and, in point of 
space as well as in amount of forces, more extensive) 
the Russian anabasis and katabasis of Napoleon; 3dly, 
by that of a religious Exodus, authorised by an oracle 
venerated throughout many nations of Asia — an Exodus, 
therefore, in so far resembling the great Scriptural Exodus 
of the Israelites, under Moses and Joshua, as well as in 
the very peculiar distinction of carrying along with them 



Revolt oj the Tartars 87 

their entire families, women, children, slaves, their herds 
of cattle and of sheep, their horses and their camels. 

This triple character of the enterprise naturally in- 
vests it with a more comprehensive interest. But the 
dramatic interest which I have ascribed to it, or its fitness 
for a stage representation, depends partly upon the 
marked variety and the strength of the personal agencies 
concerned, and partly upon the succession of scenical 
situations. Even the steppes, the camels, the tents, the 
snowy and the sandy deserts, are not beyond the scale 
of our modern representative powers, as often called into 
action in the theatres both of Paris and London ; and the 
series of situations unfolded — beginning with the general 
conflagration on the Wolga — passing thence to the dis- 
astrous scenes of the flight (as it literally was in its com- 
mencement) — to the Tartar siege of the Russian fortress 
Koulagina — the bloody engagement with the Cossacks 
in the mountain passes at Ouchim — the surprisal by the 
Bashkirs, and the advanced posts of the Russian army 
at Torgau — the private conspiracy at this point against 
the Khan — the long succession of running fights — the 
parting massacres at the Lake of Tengis under the eyes 
of the Chinese — and, finally, the tragical retribution to 
Zebek-Dorchi at the hunting lodge of the Chinese Em- 
peror; — all these situations communicate a scenical 
animation to the wild romance, if treated dramatically; 
whilst a higher and a philosophic interest belongs to it 
as a case of authentic history, commemorating a great 
revolution for good and for evil in the fortunes of a whole 
people — a people semi-barbarous, but simple hearted, 
and of ancient descent. 

On the 2ist of January, 1761, the young Prince 
Oubacha assumed the sceptre of the Kalmucks upon 



88 Essays Every Child Should Know 

the death of his father. Some part of the power attached 
to this dignity he had already wielded since his four- 
teenth year, in quality of Vice-Khan, by the express 
appointment and with the avowed support of the Russian 
Government. He was now about eighteen years of age, 
amiable in his personal character, and not without titles 
to respect in his public character as a sovereign prince. 
In times more peaceable, and amongst a people more 
entirely civilised, or more humanised by religion, it is 
even probable that he might have discharged his high 
duties with considerable distinction. But his lot was 
thrown upon stormy times, and a most difficult crisis 
amongst tribes whose native ferocity was exasperated by 
debasing forms of superstition, and by a nationality as 
well as an inflated conceit of their own merit absolutely 
unparalleled, whilst the circumstances of their hard and 
trying position under the jealous surveillance of an 
irresistible lord paramount, in the person of the Russian 
Czar, gave a fiercer edge to the natural unamiableness 
of the Kalmuck disposition, and irritated its gloomier 
qualities into action under the restless impulses of sus- 
picion and permanent distrust. No prince could hope 
for a cordial allegiance from his subjects or a peaceful 
reign under the circumstances of the case; for the 
dilemma in which a Kalmuck ruler stood at present was 
of this nature: wanting the sanction and support of the 
Czar, he was inevitably too weak from without to com- 
mand confidence from his subjects, or resistance to his 
competitors; on the other hand, with this kind of sup- 
port, and deriving his title in any degree from the favour 
of the Imperial Court, he became almost in that extent 
an object of hatred at home, and within the whole com- 
pass of his own territory. He was at once an object of 



Revolt oj the Tartars 89 

hatred for the past, being a living monument of national 
independence ignominiously surrendered, and an object 
of jealousy for the future, as one who had already adver- 
tised himself to be a fitting tool for the ultimate purposes 
(whatsoever those might prove to be) of the Russian 
Court Coming himself to the Kalmuck sceptre under 
the heaviest weight of prejudice from the unfortunate 
circumstances of his position, it might have been ex- 
pected that Oubacha would have been pre-emmently 
an object of detestation; for, besides his known de- 
pendence upon the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, the direct 
line of succession had been set aside, and the prmciple 
of inheritance violently suspended, in favour of his own 
father, so recently as nineteen years before the era of 
his own accession, consequently within the lively remem- 
brance of the existing generation. He therefore, almost 
equally with his father, stood within the full current of 
the national prejudices, and might have anticipated the 
most pointed hostility. But it was not so: such are the 
caprices in human affairs that he was even, in a moderate 
sense, popular-a benefit which wore the more cheermg 
aspect, and the promises of permanence, inasmuch as 
he owed it exclusively to his personal qualities of kindness 
and affability, as well as to the beneficence of his govern- 
ment. On the other hand, to balance this unlooked-for 
prosperity at the outset of his reign, he met with a rival 
in popular favour— almost a competitor— in the person 
of Zebek-Dorchi, a prince with considerable pretensions 
to the throne, and perhaps, it might be said, with equal 
pretensions. Zebek-Dorchi was a direct descendant of 
the same royal house as himself, through a different 
branch. On public grounds, his claim stood, perhaps, 
on a footing equally good with that of Oubacha, whilst 



9© Essays Every Child Should Know 

his personal qualities, even in those aspects which seemed 
to a philosophical observer most odious and repulsive, 
promised the most effectual aid to the dark purposes of 
an intriguer or a conspirator, and were generally fitted 
to win a popular support precisely in those points where 
Oubacha was most defective. He was much superior 
in external appearance to his rival on the throne, and so 
far better qualified to win the good opinion of a semi- 
barbarous people; whilst his dark intellectual qualities 
of Machiavelian dissimulation, profound hypocrisy, and 
perfidy which knew no touch of remorse, were admirably 
calculated to sustain any ground which he might win 
from the simple-hearted people with whom he had to 
deal, and from the frank carelessness of his unconscious 
competitor. 

At the very outset of his treacherous career, Zebek- 
Dorchi was sagacious enough to perceive that nothing 
could be gained by open declaration of hostility to the 
reigning prince: the choice had been a deliberate act 
on the part of Russia, and Elizabeth Petrowna was not 
the person to recall her own favours with levity or upon 
slight grounds. Openly, therefore, to have declared his 
enmity towards his relative on the throne could have had 
no effect but that of arming suspicions against his own 
ulterior purposes in a quarter where it was most essential 
to his interest that, for the present, all suspicion should 
be hoodwinked. Accordingly, after much meditation, 
the course he took for opening his snares was this: — 
He raised a rumour that his own life was in danger from 
the plots of several Saissang (that is, Kalmuck nobles), 
who were leagued together, under an oath, to assassinate 
him; and immediately after, assuming a well-counter- 
feited alarm, he fled to Tcherkask, followed by sixty-five 



Revolt oj the Tartars ' 91 

tents. From this place he kept up a correspondence 
with the Imperial Court; and, by way of soliciting his 
cause more effectually, he soon repaired in person to St. 
Petersburg. Once admitted to personal conferences 
with the cabinet, he found no difficulty in winning over 
the Russian counsels to a concurrence with some of his 
political views, and thus covertly introducing the point 
of that wedge which was finally to accomplish his pur- 
poses. In particular, he persuaded the Russian govern- 
ment to make a very important alteration in the consti- 
tution of the Kalmuck State Council, which in effect 
reorganised the whole political condition of the state, and 
disturbed the balance of power as previously adjusted. 
Of this council — in the Kalmuck language called Sarga — 
there were eight members, called Sargatchi ; and hitherto 
it had been the custom that these eight members should 
be entirely subordinate to the Khan; holding, in fact, 
the ministerial character of secretaries and assistants, 
but in no respect ranking as co-ordinate authorities. 
That had produced some inconveniences in former 
reigns; and it was easy for Zebek-Dorchi to point the 
jealousy of the Russian Court to others more serious 
which might arise in future circumstances of war or other 
contingencies. It was resolved, therefore, to place the 
Sargatchi henceforward on a footing of perfect independ- 
ence, and therefore (as regarded responsibility) on a 
footing of equality with the Khan. Their independence, 
however, had respect only, to their own sovereign; for 
toward Russia they were placed in a new attitude of 
direct duty and accountability by the creation in their 
favour of small pensions (300 roubles a year) which, 
however, to a Kalmuck of that day were more consider- 
able than might be supposed, and had a farther value as 



92 Essays Every Child Should Know 

marks of honorary distinction emanating from a great 
empress. Thus far the purposes of Zebek-Dorchi were 
served effectually for the moment: but, apparently, it 
was only for the moment; since, in the further develop- 
ment of his plots, this very dependency upon Russian 
influence would be the most serious obstacle in his way. 
There was, however, another point carried which out- 
weighed all inferior considerations, as it gave him a power 
of setting aside discretionally whatsoever should arise to 
disturb his plots: he was himself appointed President 
and Controller of the Sargatchi. The Russian Court 
had been aware of his high pretensions by birth, and 
hoped by this promotion to satisfy the ambition which, 
in some degree, was acknowledged to be a reasonable 
passion for any man occupying his situation. 

Having thus completely blindfolded the cabinet of 
Russia, Zebek-Dorchi proceeded in his new character 
to fulfil his political mission with the Khan of the Kal- 
mucks. So artfully did he prepare the road for his 
favourable reception at the court of this prince that he 
was at once and universally welcomed as a benefactor. 
The pensions of the councillors were so much additional 
wealth poured into the Tartar exchequer; as to the ties 
of dependency thus created, experience had not yet 
enlightened these simple tribes as to that result. And 
that he himself should be the chief of these mercenary 
councillors was so far from being charged upon Zebek 
as any offence or any ground of suspicion, that his relative 
the Khan returned him hearty thanks for his services, 
under the belief that he could have accepted this appoint- 
ment only with a view to keep out other and more unwel- 
come pretenders, who would not have had the same 
motives of consanguinity or friendship for executing its 



Revolt of the Tartars 93 

duties in a spirit of kindness to the Kalmucks. The 
first use which he made of his new functions about the 
Khan's person was to attack the Court of Russia, by a 
romantic villainy not easily to be credited, for those very 
acts of interference with the council which he himself 
had prompted. This was a dangerous step: but it was 
indispensable to his farther advance upon the gloomy 
path which he had traced out for himself. A triple 
vengeance was what he meditated: i, upon the Russian 
cabinet, for having undervalued his own pretensions to 
the throne; 2, upon his amiable rival, for having sup- 
planted him; and, 3, upon all those of the nobility who 
had manifested their sense of his weakness by their 
neglect, or their sense of his perfidious character by their 
suspicions. Here was a colossal outline of wickedness; 
and by one in his situation, feeble (as it might seem) of 
the accomplishment of its humblest parts, how was the 
total edifice to be reared in its comprehensive grandeur ? 
He, a worm as he was, could he venture to assail the 
mighty behemoth of Muscovy, the potentate who counted 
three hundred languages around the footsteps of his 
throne, and from whose "lion ramp" recoiled alike 
"baptised and infidel" — Christendom on the one side, 
strong by her intellect and her organisation, and the 
"Barbaric East" on the other, with her unnumbered 
numbers? The match was a monstrous one; but in 
its very monstrosity there lay this germ of encourage- 
ment, that it could not be suspected. The very hope- 
lessness of the scheme grounded his hope, and he resolved 
to execute a vengeance which should involve, as it were, 
in the unity of a well-laid tragic fable, all whom he 
judged to be his enemies. That vengeance lay in de- 
taching from the Russian Empire the whole Kalmuck 



94 Essays Every Child Should Know 

nation, and breaking up that system of intercourse which 
had thus far been beneficial to both. This last was a 
consideration which moved him but little. True it was 
that Russia, to the Kalmucks, had secured lands and 
extensive pasturage; true it was, that the Kalmucks 
reciprocally to Russia had furnished a powerful cavalry. 
But the latter loss would be part of his triumph, and the 
former might be more than compensated in other climates 
under other sovereigns. Here was a scheme which, in 
its final accomplishment, would avenge him bitterly on 
the Czarina, and in the course of its accomplishment 
might furnish him with ample occasions for removing 
his other enemies. It may be readily supposed, indeed, 
but he who could deliberately raise his eyes to the Russian 
autocrat as an antagonist in single duel with himself 
was not likely to feel much anxiety about Kalmuck en- 
emies of whatever rank. He took his resolution, there- 
fore, sternly and irrevocably to effect this astonishing 
translation of an ancient people across the pathless 
deserts of Central Asia, intersected continually by rapid 
rivers, rarely furnished with bridges, and of which the 
fords were known only to those who might think it for 
their interest to conceal them, through many nations 
inhospitable or hostile ; frost and snow around them 
(from the necessity of commencing their flight in the win- 
ter), famine in their front, and the sabre, or even the 
artillery of an offended and mighty empress, hanging 
upon their rear for thousands of miles. But what was 
to be their final mark — the port of shelter after so fearful 
a course of wandering? Two things were evident: it 
must be some power at a great distance from Russia, so 
as to make return even in that view hopeless; and it must 
be a power of sufficient rank to insure them protection 



Revolt oj the Tartars 95 

from any hostile efforts on the part of the Czarina 
for reclaiming them, or for chastising their revolt. Both 
conditions were united obviously in the person of Kien 
Long, the reigning Emperor of China, who was further 
recommended to them by his respect for the head of their 
religion. To China, therefore, and, as their first ren- 
dezvous, to the shadow of the great Chinese Wall, it was 
settled by Zebek that they should direct their flight. 

Next came the question of time — when should the 
flight commence? and, finally, the more delicate ques- 
tion as to the choice of accomplices. To extend the 
knowledge of the conspiracy too far was to insure its 
betrayal to the Russian Government. Yet, at some 
stage of the preparations, it was evident that a very 
extensive confidence must be made, because in no other 
way could the mass of the Kalmuck population be per- 
suaded to furnish their families with the requisite equip- 
ments for so long a migration. This critical step, how- 
ever, it was resolved to defer up to the latest possible 
moment, and, at all events, to make no general com- 
munication on the subject until the time of departure 
should be definitely settled. In the meantime, Zebek 
admitted only three persons to his confidence; of whom 
Oubacha, the reigning prince, was almost necessarily 
one; but him, from his yielding and somewhat feeble 
character, he viewed rather in the light of a tool than as 
one of his active accomplices. Those whom (if anybody) 
he admitted to an unreserved participation in his counsels 
were two only: the great Lama among the Kalmucks, 
and his own father-in-law, Erempel, a ruling prince of 
some tribe in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, 
recommended to his favour not so much by any strength 
of talent corresponding to the occasion as by his blind 



96 Essays Every Child Should Know 

devotion to himself and his passionate anxiety to pro- 
mote the elevation of his daughter and his son-in-law 
to the throne of a sovereign prince. A titular prince 
Zebek already was: but this dignity, without the sub- 
stantial accompaniment of a sceptre, seemed but an 
empty sound to both of these ambitious rebels. The 
other accomplice, whose name was Loosan-Dchaltzan, 
and whose rank was that of Lama, or Kalmuck pontiff, 
was a person of far more distinguished pretensions; he 
had something of the same gloomy and terrific pride 
which marked the character of Zebek himself, mani- 
festing also the same energy, accompanied by the same 
unfaltering cruelty, and a natural facility of dissimulation 
even more profound. It was by this man that the other 
question was settled, as to the time for giving effect to 
their designs. His own pontifical character had sug- 
gested to him that, in order to strengthen their influence 
with the vast mob of simple-minded men whom they were 
to lead into a howling wilderness, after persuading them 
to lay desolate their own ancient hearths, it was indis- 
pensable that they should be able, in cases of extremity, 
to plead the express sanction of God for their entire 
enterprise. This could only be done by addressing 
themselves to the great head of their religion, the Dalai- 
Lama of Tibet. Him they easily persuaded to counte- 
nance their schemes: and an oracle was delivered solemnly 
at Tibet, to the effect that no ultimate prosperity would 
attend this great Exodus unless it were pursued through 
the years of the Hger and the hare. Now, the Kalmuck 
custom is to distinguish their years by attaching to each 
denomination taken from one of twelve animals, the 
exact order of succession being u^:30iutely fixed, so that 
the cycle revolves of course through a period of a dozen 



Revolt oj the Tartars 97 

years. Consequently, if the approaching year of the 
tiger were suffered to escape them, in that case the expedi- 
tion must be delayed for twelve years more; within 
which period, even were no other unfavourable changes 
to arise, it was pretty well foreseen that the Russian 
Government would take the most effectual means for 
bridling their vagrant propensities by a ring-fence of 
forts or military posts; to say nothing of the still readier 
plan for securing their fidelity (a plan already talked of 
in all quarters) by exacting a large body of hostages 
selected from the families of the most influential nobles. 
On these cogent considerations, it was solemnly deter- 
mined that this terrific experiment should be made in 
the next year of the tiger, which happened to fall upon 
the Christian year 1771. With respect to the month, 
there was, unhappily for the Kalmucks, even less latitude 
allowed to their choice than with respect to the year. 
It was absolutely necessary, or it was thought so, that 
the different divisions of the nation which pastured their 
flocks on both banks of the Wolga should have the means 
of effecting an instantaneous junction; because the 
danger of being intercepted by flying columns of the 
imperial armies was precisely the greatest at the outset. 
Now, from the want of bridges, or sufficient river craft 
for transporting so vast a body of men, the sole means 
which could be depended upon (especially where so 
many women, children, and camels were concerned) 
was ice: and this, in a state of sufficient firmness, could 
not be absolutely counted upon before the month of 
January. Hence it happened that this astonishing 
Exodus of a whole nation, before so much as a whisper 
of the design had begun to circulate amongst those whom 
it most interested, before it was even suspected that any 



98 Essays Every Child Should Know 

man's wishes pointed in that direction, had been definitely 
appointed for January of the year 1771. And almost 
up to the Christmas of 1770 the poor simple Kalmuck 
herdsmen and their families were going nightly to their 
peaceful beds, without even dreaming that the,^fl/ had 
already gone forth from their rulers which consigned 
those quiet abodes, together with the peace and com- 
fort which reigned within them, to a withering desolation, 
now close at hand. 

Meantime war raged on a great scale between Russia 
and the Sultan; and, until the time arrived for throw- 
ing off their vassalage, it was necessary that Oubacha 
should contribute his usual contingent of martial aid. 
Nay, it had unfortunately become prudent that he should 
contribute much more than his usual aid.. Human 
experience gives ample evidence that in some mysterious 
and unaccountable way no great design is ever agitated, 
no matter how few or how faithful may be the participa- 
tors, but that some presentiment — some dim misgiving — 
is kindled amongst those whom it is chiefly important 
to blind. And, however it might have happened, certain 
it is that already, when as yet no syllable of the conspiracy 
had been breathed to any man whose very existence was 
not staked upon its concealment, nevertheless, some 
vague and uneasy jealousy had arisen in the Russian 
Cabinet as to the future schemes of the Kalmuck Khan: 
and very probable it is that, but for the war then raging, 
and the consequent prudence of conciliating a very im- 
portant vassal, or, at least, of abstaining from what would 
powerfully alienate him, even at that moment such 
measures would have been adopted as must forever 
have intercepted the Kalmuck schemes. Slight as 
were the jealousies of the Imperial Court, they had not 



Revolt oj the Tartars 99 

escaped the Machiavelian eyes of Zebek and the Lama. 
And under their guidance Oubacha, bending to the cir- 
cumstances of the moment, and meeting the Jealousy of 
the Russian Court with a poHcy corresponding to their 
own, strove by unusual zeal to efface the Czarina's un- 
favourable impressions. He enlarged the scale of his 
contributions, and that so prodigiously that he absolutely 
carried to headquarters a force of 35,000 cavalry fully 
equipped: some go further, and rate the amount beyond 
40,000; but the smaller estimate is, at all events, within 
the truth. 

With this magnificent array of cavalry, heavy as well 
as light, the Khan went into the field under great expecta- 
tions; and these he more than realised. Having the 
good fortune to be concerned with so ill-organised and 
disorderly a description of force as that which at all times 
composed the bulk of a Turkish army, he carried victory 
along with his banners; gained many partial successes; 
and at last, in a pitched battle overthrew the Turkish 
force opposed to him with a loss of 5,000 men left upon 
the field. 

These splendid achievements seemed likely to operate 
in various ways against the impending revolt. Oubacha 
had now a strong motive, in the martial glory acquired, 
for continuing his connection with the empire in whose 
service he had won it, and by whom only it could be fully 
appreciated. He was now a great marshal of a great 
empire, one of the Paladins around the imperial throne; 
in China he would be nobody, or (worse than that) a 
mendicant alien, prostrate at the feet, and soliciting the 
p-recarious alms, of a prince with whom he had no con- 
nection. Besides, it might reasonably be expected that 
the Czarina, grateful for the really efficient aid given by 

uor& 



loo Essays Every Child Should Know 

the Tartar prince, would confer upon him such eminent 
rewards as might be sufficient to anchor his hopes upon 
Russia, and to wean him from every possible seduction. 
These were the obvious suggestions of prudence and good 
sense to every man who stood neutral in the case. But 
they were disappointed. The Czarina knew her obli- 
gations to the Khan, but she did not acknowledge them. 
Wherefore? That is a mystery, perhaps never to be 
explained. So it was, however. The Khan went un- 
honoured; no ukase ever proclaimed his merits; and 
perhaps, had he even been abundantly recompensed by 
Russia, there were others who would have defeated these 
tendencies to reconciliation. Erempel, Zebek, and 
Loosang the Lama, were pledged life-deep to prevent 
any accommodation; and their efforts were unfortunately 
seconded by those of their deadliest enemies. In the 
Russian Court there were at that time some great nobles 
preoccupied with feelings of hatred and blind malice 
toward the Kalmucks, quite as strong as any which the 
Kalmucks could harbour toward Russia, and not, per- 
haps, so well founded. Just as much as the Kalmucks 
hated the Russian yoke, their galling assumption of 
authority, the marked air of disdain, as towards a nation 
of ugly, stupid, and filthy barbarians, which too 
generally marked the Russian bearing and language, 
but, above all, the insolent contempt, or even 
outrages, which the Russian governors or great military 
commandants tolerated in their followers toward the 
barbarous religion and superstitious mummeries of the 
Kalmuck priesthood — precisely in that extent did the 
ferocity of the Russian resentment, and their wrath at 
seeing the trampled worm turn or attempt a feeble retalia- 
tion, react upon the unfortunate Kalmucks. At this 



Revolt oj the Tartars loi 

crisis, it is probable that envy and wounded pride, upon 
witnessing the splendid victories of Oubacha and Mo- 
motbacha over the Turks and Bashkirs, contributed 
strength to the Russian irritation. And it must have 
been through the intrigues of those nobles about her 
person who chiefly smarted under these feelings that the 
Czarina could ever have lent herself to the unwise and 
ungrateful policy pursued at this critical period toward 
the Kalmuck Khan. That Czarina was no longer 
Elizabeth Petrowna; it was Catherine II — 3. princess 
who did not often err so injuriously (injuriously for her- 
self as much as for others) in the measures of her govern- 
ment. She had soon ample reason for repenting of her 
false policy. Meantime, how much it must have co- 
operated with the other motives previously acting upon 
Oubacha in sustaining his determination to revolt, and 
how powerfully it must have assisted the efforts of all 
the Tartar chieftains in preparing the minds of their 
people to feel the necessity of this difficult enterprise, 
by arming their pride and their suspicions against the 
Russian government, through the keenness of their 
sympathy with the wrongs of their insulted prince, may 
readily be imagined. It is a fact, and it has been confessed 
by candid Russians themselves, when treating of this 
great dismemberment, that the conduct of the Russian 
Cabinet throughout the period of suspense and during 
the crisis of hesitation in the Kalmuck Council was ex- 
actly such as was most desirable for the purposes of the 
conspirators; it was such, in fact, as to set the seal to all 
their machinations, by supplying distinct evidences and 
official vouchers for what could otherwise have been, at 
the most, matters of doubtful suspicion and indirect 
presumption. 



I02 Essays Every Child Should Know 

Nevertheless, in the face of all these arguments, and 
even allowing their weight so far as not at all to deny 
the injustice or the impolicy of the imperial ministers, 
it is contended by many persons who have reviewed the 
affair with a command of all the documents bearing on 
the case, more especially the letters or minutes of council 
subsequently discovered in the handwriting of Zebek- 
Dorchi, and the important evidence of the Russian 
captive Weseloff, who was carried off by the Kalmucks 
in their flight, that beyond all doubt Oubacha was power- 
less for any purpose of impeding or even of delaying the 
revolt. He himself, indeed, was under religious obli- 
gations of the most terrific solemnity never to flinch from 
the enterprise, or even to slacken in his zeal: for Zebek- 
Dorchi, distrusting the firmness of his resolution under 
any unusual pressure or alarm or difficulty, had, in the 
very earliest stage of the conspiracy, availed himself of 
the Khan's well-known superstition to engage him, by 
means of previous concert with the priests and their 
head the Lama, in some dark and mysterious rites of 
consecration, terminating in oaths under such terrific 
sanctions as no Kalmuck would have courage to violate. 
As far, therefore, as regarded the personal share of the 
Khan in what was to come, Zebek was entirely at his 
ease; he knew him to be so deeply pledged by religious 
terrors to the prosecution of the conspiracy that no 
honours within the Czarina's gift could have possibly 
shaken his adhesion: and then, as to threats from the 
same quarter, he knew him to be sealed against those 
fears by others of a gloomier character, and better adapted 
to his peculiar temperament. For Oubacha was a brave 
man as respected all bodily enemies or the dangers of 
human warfare, but was as sensitive and as timid as the 



Revolt oj the Tartars 103 

most superstitious of old women in facing the frowns of 
a priest, or under the vague anticipations of ghostly 
retributions. But, had it been otherwise, and had there 
been any reason to apprehend an unsteady demeanour 
on the part of this prince at the approach of the 
critical moment, such were the changes already 
effected in the state of their domestic politics amongst 
the Tartars, by the undermining arts of Zebek-Dorchi 
and his ally the Lama, that very little importance would 
have attached to that doubt. All power was now effectu- 
ally lodged in the hands of Zebek-Dorchi. He was the 
true and absolute wielder of the Kalmuck sceptre; all 
measures of importance were submitted to his discretion; 
and nothing was finally resolved but under his dictation. 
This result he had brought about, in a year or two, by 
means sufficiently simple: first of all, by availing himself 
of the prejudice in his favour, so largely diffused amongst 
the lowest of the Kalmucks, that his own title to the 
throne, in quality of great-grandson in a direct line from 
Ajouka, the most illustrious of all the Kalmuck Khans, 
stood upon a better basis than that of Oubacha, who 
derived from a collateral branch; secondly, with respect 
to that sole advantage which Oubacha possessed above 
himself in the ratification of his title, by improving this 
difference between their situations to the disadvantage 
of his competitor, as one who had not scrupled to accept 
that triumph from an alien power at the price of his inde- 
pendence which he himself (as he would have it 
understood) disdained to court; thirdly, by his own 
talents and address, coupled with the ferocious energy 
of his moral character; fourthly — and perhaps in an 
equal degree — by the criminal facility and good nature 
of Oubacha; finally (which is remarkable enough, as 



I04 Essays Every Child Should Know 

illustrating the character of the man), by that very new 
modelling of the Sarga or Privy Council which he had 
used as a principal topic of abuse and malicious insinua- 
tion against the Russian Government, whilst, in reality, 
he first had suggested the alteration to the Empress, and 
he chiefly appropriated the political advantages which it 
was fitted to yield. For, as he was himself appointed 
the chief of the Sargatchi, and as the pensions to the 
inferior Sargatchi passed through his hands, whilst in 
effect they owed their appointments to his nomination, 
it may be easily supposed that, whatever power existed 
in the state capable of controlling the Khan being held 
by the Sarga under its new organisation, and this body 
being completely under his influence, the final result 
was to throw all the functions of the state, whether 
nominally in the prince or in the council, substantially 
into the hands of this one man; whilst, at the same time, 
from the strict league which he maintained with the Lama, 
all the thunders of the spiritual power were always ready 
to come in aid of the magistrate, or to supply his inca- 
pacity in cases which he could not reach. 

But the time was now rapidly approaching for the 
mighty experiment. The day was drawing near on 
which the signal was to be given for raising the standard 
of revolt, and by a combined movement on both sides of 
the Wolga for spreading the smoke of one vast conflagra- 
tion, that should wrap in a common blaze their own huts 
and the stately cities of their enemies, over the breadth 
and length of those great provinces in which their flocks 
were dispersed. The year of the tiger was now within 
one little month of its commencement; the fifth morning 
of that year was fixed for the fatal day when the fortunes 
and happiness of a whole nation were to be put upon the 



Revolt oj the Tartars 105 

hazard of a dicer's throw; and as yet that nation was in 
profound ignorance of the whole plan. The Khan, such 
was the kindness of his nature, could not bring himself 
to make the revelation so urgently required. It was 
clear, however, that this could not be delayed; and 
Zebek-Dorchi took the task willingly upon himself. But 
where or how should this notification be made, so as to 
exclude Russian hearers? After some deliberation, the 
following plan was adopted: — Couriers, it was contrived, 
should arrive in furious haste, one upon the heels of 
another, reporting a sudden inroad of the Kirghises and 
Bashkirs upon the Kalmuck lands, at a point distant 
about one hundred and twenty miles. Thither all the 
Kalmuck families, according to immemorial custom, 
were required to send a separate representative; and 
there accordingly, within three days, all appeared. The 
distance, the solitary ground appointed for the rendez- 
vous, the rapidity of the march, all tended to make it 
almost certain that no Russian could be present. Zebek- 
Dorchi then came forward. He did not waste many 
words upon rhetoric. He unfurled an immense sheet of 
parchment, visible from the uttermost distance at which 
any of this vast crowd could stand; the total number 
amounted to 80,000; all saw, and many heard. They 
were told of the oppressions of Russia; of her pride and 
haughty disdain evidenced towards them by a thousand 
acts; of her contempt for their religion; of her determina- 
tion to reduce them to absolute slavery; of the prelimin- 
ary measures she had already taken by erecting forts 
upon many of the great rivers in their neighbourhood; 
of the ulterior intentions she thus announced to circum- 
scribe their pastoral lands, until they would all be obliged 
to renounce their flocks, and to collect in towns like 



io6 Essays Every Child Should Know 

Sarepta, there to pursue mechanical and servile trades 
of shoemaker, tailor, and weaver, such as the freeborn 
Tartar had always disdained. "Then again," said the 
subtle prince, " she increases her military levies upon our 
population every year; we pour out our blood as young 
men in her defence, or more often in support of her 
insolent aggressions; and as old men we reap nothing 
from our sufferings, nor benefit by our survivorship where 
so many are sacrificed/' At this point of his harangue, 
Zebek produced several papers (forged, as it is generally 
believed, by himself and the Lama), containing projects of 
the Russian court for a general transfer of the eldest sons 
taken en masse from the greatest Kalmuck families, to 
the imperial court. "Now let this be once accom- 
plished," he argued, "and there is an end of all useful 
resistance from that day forwards. Petitions we might 
make, or even remonstrances; as men of words we might 
play a bold part; but for deeds, for that sort of language 
by which our ancestors were used to speak — holding us 
by such a chain, Russia would make a jest of our wishes, 
knowing full well that we should not dare to make any 
effectual movement." 

Having thus sufficiently roused the angry passions of 
his vast audience, and having alarmed their fears by this 
pretended scheme against their firstborn (an artifice 
which was indispensable to his purpose, because it met 
beforehand every form of amendment to his proposal 
coming from the more moderate nobles, who would not 
otherwise have failed to insist upon trying the effect of 
bold addresses to the Empress before resorting to any 
desperate extremity), Zebek-Dorchi opened his scheme of 
revolt, and, if so, of instant revolt; since any preparations 
reported at St. Petersburg would be a signal for the 



Revolt oj the Tartars 107 

armies of Russia to cross into such positions from all 
parts of Asia as would effectually intercept their march. 
It is remarkable, however, that, with all his audacity 
and his reliance upon the momentary excitement of the 
Kalmucks, the subtle prince did not venture, at this 
stage of his seduction, to make so startling a proposal as 
that of a flight to China. All that he held out for the 
present was a rapid march to the Temba or some other 
great river, which they were to cross, and to take up a 
strong position on the farther bank, from which, as from 
a post of conscious security, they could hold a bolder 
language to the Czarina, and one which would have a 
better chance of winning a favourable audience. 

These things, in the irritated condition of the simple 
Tartars, passed by acclamation; and all returned home- 
wards to push forward with the most furious speed the 
preparations for their awful undertaking. Rapid and 
energetic these of necessity were; and in that degree they 
became noticeable and manifest to the Russians who 
happened to be intermingled with the different hordes, 
either on commercial errands, or as agents officially from 
the Russian Government, some in a financial, others in 
a diplomatic character. 

Amongst these last (indeed at the head of them) was 
a Russian of some distinction, by name Kichinskoi, a 
man memorable for his vanity, and memorable also as 
one of the many victims to the Tartar revolution. This 
Kichinskoi had been sent by the Empress as her envoy 
to overlook the conduct of the Kalmucks; he was styled 
the Grand Pristaw, or Great Commissioner, and was 
universally known amongst the Tartar tribes by this 
title. His mixed character of ambassador and of political 
surveillant, combined with the dependent state of the 



io8 Essays Every Child Should Know 

Kalmucks, gave him a real weight in the Tartar councils, 
and might have given him a far greater, had not his out- 
rageous self-conceit and his arrogant confidence in his 
own authority, as due chiefly to his personal qualities for 
command, led him into such harsh displays of power, 
and menaces so odious to the Tartar pride, as very soon 
made him an object for their profoundest malice. He 
had publicly insulted the Khan; and, upon making a 
communication to him to the effect that some reports 
began to circulate, and even to reach the Empress, of a 
design in agitation to fly from the imperial dominions, he 
had ventured to say, "But this you dare not attempt; 
I laugh at such rumours; yes, Khan, I laugh at them to 
the Empress; for you are a chained bear, and that you 
know." The Khan turned away on his heel with marked 
disdain; and the Pristaw, foaming at the mouth, con- 
tinued to utter, amongst those of the Khan's attendants 
who stayed behind to catch his real sentiments in a mo- 
ment of unguarded passion, all that the blindest frenzy 
of rage could suggest to the most presumptuous of fools. 
It was now ascertained that suspicions had arisen; but 
at the same time it was ascertained that the Pristaw spoke 
no more than the truth in representing himself to have 
discredited these suspicions. The fact was that the mere 
infatuation of vanity made him believe that nothing could 
go on undetected by his all-piercing sagacity, and that 
no rebellion could prosper when rebuked by his command- 
ing presence. The Tartars, therefore, pursued their 
preparations, confiding in the obstinate blindness of the 
Grand Pristaw as in their perfect safeguard; and such 
it proved — to his own ruin as well as that of myriads 
besides. 

Christmas arrived; and a little before that time courier 



Revolt oj the Tartars 109 

upon courier came dropping in, one upon the very heels 
of another, to St. Petersburg, assuring the Czarina that 
beyond all doubt the Kalmucks were in the very crisis of 
departure. These despatches came from the Governor 
of Astrachan, and copies were instantly forwarded to 
Kichinskoi. Now, it happened that between this 
governor— a Russian named Beketoff— and the Pristaw 
had been an ancient feud. The very name of Beketoff 
inflamed his resentment; and no sooner did he see that 
hated name attached to the despatch than he felt himself 
confirmed in his former views with tenfold bigotry, and 
wrote instantly, in terms of the most pointed ridicule, 
against the new alarmist, pledging his own head upon 
the visionariness of his alarms. Beketoff, however, was 
not to be put down by a few hard words, or by ridicule: 
he persisted in his statements; the Russian ministry were 
confounded by the obstinacy of the disputants; and 
some were beginning even to treat the Governor of 
Astrachan as a bore, and as the dupe of his own nervous 
terrors, when the memorable day arrived, the fatal 5th 
of January, which forever terminated the dispute, and 
put a seal upon the earthly hopes and fortunes of unnum- 
bered myriads. The Governor of Astrachan was the 
first to hear the news. Stung by the mixed furies of 
jealousy, of triumphant vengeance, and of anxious am- 
bition, he sprang into his sledge, and, at the rate of 300 
miles a day, pursued his route to St. Petersburg 
—rushed into the Imperial presence— announced the 
total realisation of his worst predictions; and, upon the 
confirmation of this intelligence by subsequent despatches 
from many different posts on the Wolga, he received an 
imperial commission to seize the person of his deluded 
enemy, and to keep him in strict captivity. These 



no Essays Every Child Should Know 

orders were eagerly fulfilled; and the unfortunate Kichin- 
skoi soon afterward expired of grief and mortification in 
the gloomy solitude of a dungeon — a victim to his own 
immeasurable vanity, and the blinding self-delusion of 
a presumption that refused all warning. 

The Governor of Astrachan had been but too faithful 
a prophet. Perhaps even he was surprised at the sud- 
denness with which the verification followed his reports. 
Precisely on the 5th of January, the day so solemnly 
appointed under religious sanctions by the Lama, the 
Kalmucks on the east bank of the Wolga were seen at 
the earliest dawn of day assembling by troops and squad- 
rons, and in the tumultuous movement of some great 
morning of battle. Tens of thousands continued moving 
off the ground at every half-hour's interval. Women 
and children, to the amount of two hundred thousand and 
upward, were placed upon wagons, or upon camels, and 
drew off by masses of twenty thousand at once — placed 
under suitable escorts, and continually swelled in num- 
bers by other outlying bodies of the horde, who kept 
falling in at various distances upon the first and second 
day's march. From sixty to eighty thousand of those 
who were the best mounted stayed behind the rest of the 
tribes, with purposes of devastation and plunder more 
violent than prudence justified, or the amiable character 
of the Khan could be supposed to approve. But in this, 
as in other instances, he was completely overruled by the 
malignant counsels of Zebek-Dorchi. The first tempest 
of the desolating fury of the Tartars discharged itself upon 
their own habitations. But this, as cutting off all infirm 
looking backward from the hardships of their march, had 
been thought so necessary a measure by all the chieftains 
that even Oubacha himself was the first to authorise the 



Revolt oj the Tartars iii' 

act by his own example. He seized a torch previously- 
prepared with materials the most durable as well as com- 
bustible, and steadily applied it to the timbers of his own 
palace. Nothing was saved from the general wreck 
except the portable part of the domestic utensils, and 
that part of the wood-work which could be applied to 
the manufacture of the long Tartar lances. This chapter 
in their memorable day's work being finished, and 
the whole of their villages throughout a district of 
ten thousand square miles in one simultaneous blaze, the 
Tartars waited for further orders. 

These, it was intended, should have taken a character 
of valedictory vengeance, and thus have left behind to 
the Czarina a dreadful commentary upon the main mo- 
tives of their flight. It was the purpose of Zebek-Dorchi 
that all the Russian towns, churches, and buildings of 
every description, should be given up to pillage and 
destruction, and such treatment applied to the defenceless 
inhabitants as might naturally be expected from a fierce 
people already infuriated by the spectacle of their own 
outrages, and by the bloody retaliations which they must 
necessarily have provoked. This part of the tragedy, 
however, was happily intercepted by a providential 
disappointment at the very crisis of departure. It has 
been mentioned already that the motive for selecting the 
depth of winter as the season of flight (which otherwise 
was obviously the very worst possible) had been the im- 
possibility of effecting a junction sufficiently rapid with 
the tribes on the west of the Wolga, in the absence of 
bridges, unless by a natural bridge of ice. For this one 
advantage, the Kalmuck leaders had consented to aggra- 
vate by a thousandfold the calamities inevitable to a 
rapid flight over boundless tracts of country, with women ^ 



112 Essays Every Child Should Know 

children, and herds of cattle — for this one single advan- 
tage; and yet, after all, it was lost. The reason never 
has been explained satisfactorily, but the fact was such. 
Some have said that the signals were not properly con- 
certed for marking the moment of absolute departure — 
that is, for signifying whether the settled intention of the 
Eastern Kalmucks might not have been suddenly inter- 
rupted by adverse intelligence. Others have supposed 
that the ice might not be equally strong on both sides of 
the river, and might even be generally insecure for the 
treading of heavy and heavily-laden animals such as 
camels. But the prevailing notion is that some accidental 
movements on the 3d and 4th of January of Russian 
troops in the neighbourhood of the Western Kalmucks, 
though really having no reference to them or their plans, 
had been construed into certain signs that all was dis- 
covered; and that the prudence of the Western chieftains, 
who, from situation, had never been exposed to those in- 
trigues by which Zebek-Dorchi had practised upon the 
pride of the Eastern tribes, now stepped in to save their 
people from ruin. Be the cause what it might, it is 
certain that the Western Kalmucks were in some way 
prevented from forming the intended junction with their 
brethren of the opposite bank; and the result was that 
at least one hundred thousand of these Tartars were left 
behind in Russia. This accident it was which saved 
their Russian neighbours universally from the desolation 
which else awaited them. One general massacre and 
conflagration would assuredly have surprised them, to 
the utter extermination of their property, their houses, 
and themselves, had it not been for this disappointment. 
But the Eastern chieftains did not dare to put to hazard 
the safety of their brethren under the first impulse of 



Revolt oj the Tartars 113 

the Czarina's vengeance for so dreadful a tragedy; for, 
as they were well aware of too many circumstances by 
which she might discover the concurrence of the Western 
people in the general scheme of revolt, they justly feared 
that she would thence infer their concurrence also in the 
bloody events which marked its outset. 

Little did the Western Kalmucks guess what reasons 
they also had for gratitude on account of an interposition 
so unexpected, and which at the moment they so generally 
deplored. Could they but have witnessed the thousandth 
part of the sufferings which overtook their Eastern 
brethren in the first month of their sad flight, they would 
have blessed Heaven for their own narrow escape; and 
yet these sufferings of the first month were but a prelude 
or foretaste comparatively slight of those which after- 
wards succeeded. 

For now began to unroll the most awful series of 
calamities, and the most extensive, which is anywhere 
recorded to have visited the sons and daughters of men. 
It is possible that the sudden inroads of destroying 
nations, such as the Huns, or the Avars, or the Mongol 
Tartars, may have inflicted misery as extensive; but 
there the misery and the desolation would be sudden, 
like the flight of volleying lightning. Those who were 
spared at first would generally be spared to the end; those 
who perished at all would perish at once. It is possible 
that the French retreat from Moscow may have made 
some nearer approach to this calamity in duration, though 
still a feeble and miniature approach; for the French 
sufferings did not commence in good earnest until about 
one month from the time of leaving Moscow; and though 
it is true that afterwards the vials of wrath were emptied 
upon the devoted army for six or seven weeks in succession 



114 Essays Every Child Should Know 

yet what is that to this Kalmuck tragedy, which lasted 
for more than as many months? But the main feature 
of horror by which the Tartar march was distinguished 
from the French lies in the accompaniment of women 
and children. There were both, it is true, with the 
French army, but not so many as to bear any marked 
proportion to the total numbers concerned. The French, 
in short, were merely an army — a host of professional 
destroyers, whose regular trade was bloodshed and whose 
regular element was danger and suffering. But the 
Tartars were a nation carrying along with them more 
than two hundred and fifty thousand women and children, 
utterly unequal, for the most part, to any contest with the 
calamities before them. The Children of Israel were in 
the same circumstances as to the accompaniment of 
their families; but they were released from the pursuit 
of their enemies in a very early stage of their flight; and 
their subsequent residence in the Desert was not a march, 
but a continued halt, and under a continued interposition 
of Heaven for their comfortable support. Earthquakes, 
again, however comprehensive in their ravages, are 
shocks of a moment's duration. A much nearer approach 
made to the wide range and the long duration of the 
Kalmuck tragedy may have been in a pestilence such as 
that which visited Athens in the Peloponnesian War, or 
London in the reign of Charles II. There also the 
martyrs were counted by myriads, and the period of 
the desolation was counted by months. But, after all, 
the total amount of destruction was on a smaller scale; 
and there was this feature of alleviation to the conscious 
pressure of the calamity — that the misery was withdrawn 
from public notice into private chambers and hospitals. 
The siege of Jersualem by Vespasian and his son, taken 



Revolt oj the Tartars 115 

in its entire circumstances, comes nearest of all — for 
breadth and depth of suffering, for duration, for the 
exasperation of the suffering from without by internal 
feuds, and, finally, for that last most appalling expression 
of the furnace-heat of the anguish in its power to extin- 
guish the natural affections even of maternal love. But 
after all, each case had circumstances of romantic misery 
peculiar to itself — circumstances without precedent, and 
(wherever human nature is ennobled by Christianity), it 
may be confidently hoped, never to be repeated. 

The first point to be reached, before any hope of 
repose could be encouraged, was the river Jaik. This 
was not above 300 miles from the main point of departure 
on the Wolga; and, if the march thither was to be a 
forced one, and a severe one, it was alleged, on the other 
hand, that the suffering would be the more brief and 
transient; one summary exertion, not to be repeated, 
and all was achieved. Forced the march was, and 
severe beyond example: there the forewarning proved 
correct; but the promised rest proved a mere phantom 
of the wilderness — a visionary rainbow, which fled before 
their hope-sick eyes, across these interminable solitudes, 
for seven months of hardship and calamity, without a 
pause. These sufferings, by their very nature, and the 
circumstances under which they arose, were (like the 
scenery of the steppes) somewhat monotonous in their 
colouring and external features; what variety, however, 
there was will be most naturally exhibited by tracing 
historically the successive stages of the general misery, 
exactly as it unfolded itself under the double agency of 
weakness still increasing from within and hostile pres- 
sure from without. Viewed in this manner, under the 
real order of development, it is remarkable that these 



ii6 Essays Every Child Should Know 

sufferings of the Tartars, though under the moulding 
hands of accident, arrange themselves almost with a 
scenical propriety. They seem combined as with the 
skill of an artist; the intensity of the misery advancing 
regularly with the advances of the march, and the stages 
of the calamity corresponding to the stages of the route; 
so that, upon raising the curtain which veils the great 
catastrophe, we behold one vast climax of anguish, 
towering upward by regular gradations, as if constructed 
artificially for picturesque effect — a result which might 
not have been surprising had it been reasonable to antici- 
pate the same rate of speed, and even an accelerated 
rate, as prevailing through the later stages of the expedi- 
tion. But it seemed, on the contrary, most reasonable 
to calculate upon a continual decrement in the rate of 
motion according to the increasing distance from the 
headquarters of the pursuing enemy. This calculation, 
however, was defeated by the extraordinary circumstances 
that the Russian armies did not begin to close in very 
fiercely upon the Kalmucks until after they had accom- 
plished a distance of full 2,000 miles: 1,000 miles farther 
on the assaults became even more tumultuous and mur- 
derous: and already the great shadows of the Chinese 
Wall were dimly described when the frenzy and acharne- 
ment of the pursuers, and the bloody desperation of 
the miserable fugitives, had reached its uttermost ex- 
tremity. Let us briefly rehearse the main stages of the 
misery, and trace the ascending steps of the tragedy, 
according to the great divisions of the route marked 
out by the central rivers of Asia. 

The first stage, we have already said, was from the 
Wolga to the Jaik; the distance about 300 miles; the 
time allowed seven days. For the first week, therefore, 



Revolt of the Tartars 117 

the rate of marching averaged about 43 English miles 
a day. The weather was cold, but bracing; and, at a 
more moderate pace, this part of the journey might have 
been accomplished without much distress by a people 
as hardy as the Kalmucks: as it was, the cattle suffered 
greatly from over-driving; milk began to fail even for 
the children; the sheep perished by wholesale; and the 
children themselves were saved only by the innumerable 
camels. 

The Cossacks who dwelt upon the banks of the Jaik 
were the first among the subjects of Russia to come into 
collision with the Kalmucks. Great was their surprise 
at the suddenness of the irruption, and great also their 
consternation; for, according to their settled custom, 
by far the greater part of their number was absent during 
the winter months at the fisheries upon the Caspian. 
Some who were liable to surprise at the most exposed 
points fled in crowds to the fortress of Koulagina, which 
was immediately invested and summoned by Oubacha. 
He had, however, in his train only a few light pieces of 
artillery; and the Russian commandant at Koulagina, 
being aware of the hurried circumstances in which the 
Khan was placed, and that he stood upon the very edge, 
as it were, of a renewed flight, felt encouraged by these 
considerations to a more obstinate resistance than might 
else have been advisable, with an enemy so little disposed 
to observe the usages of civilised warfare. The period 
of his anxiety was not long: on the fifth day of the siege 
he described from the walls a succession of Tartar 
couriers, mounted upon fleet Bactrian camels, crossing 
the vast plains around the fortress at furious pace, and 
riding into the Kalmuck encampment at various points. 
Great agitation appeared immediately to follow: orders 



II 8 Essays Every Child Should Know 

were soon after despatched in all directions; and it 
became speedily known that upon a distant flank of the 
Kalmuck movement a bloody and exterminating battle 
had been fought the day before, in which one entire 
tribe of the Khan's dependents, numbering not less than 
9,000 fighting men, had perished to the last man. This 
was the oulosSy or clan, called Feka-Zechorr, between 
whom and the Cossacks there was a feud of ancient 
standing. In selecting, therefore, the points of attack, 
on occasion of the present hasty inroad, the Cossack 
chiefs were naturally eager so to direct their efforts as 
to combine with the service of the Empress some gratifica- 
tion to their own party hatreds: more especially as the 
present was likely to be their final opportunity for 
revenge, if the Kalmuck evasion should prosper. Having, 
therefore, concentrated as large a body of Cossack 
cavalry as circumstances allowed, they attacked the 
hostile ouloss with a precipitation which denied to it all 
means of communicating with Oubacha, for the neces- 
sity of commanding an ample range of pasturage, to 
meet the necessities of their vast flocks and herds, had 
separated this ouloss from the Khan's headquarters by 
an interval of 80 miles; and thus it was, and not from 
oversight, that it came to be thrown entirely upon its 
own resources. These had proved insufficient: retreat, 
from the exhausted state of their horses and camels, 
no less than from the prodigious encumbrances of their 
live stock, was absolutely out of the question: quarter 
was disdained on the one side, and would not have been 
granted on the other: and thus it had happened that the 
setting sun of that one day (the thirteenth from the first 
opening of the revolt) threw his parting rays upon the 
final agonies of an ancient ouloss, stretched upon a bloody 



Revolt oj the Tartars 119 

field, who on that day's dawning had held and styled 
themselves an independent nation. 

Universal consternation was diffused through the 
wide borders of the Khan's encampments by this dis- 
astrous intelligence; not so much on account of the 
numbers slain, or the total extinction of a powerful 
ally, as because the position of the Cossack force was 
likely to put to hazard the future advances of the Kal- 
mucks, or at least to retard and hold them in check 
until the heavier columns of the Russian army should 
arrive upon their flanks. The siege of Koulagina was 
instantly raised; and that signal, so fatal to the happi- 
ness of the women and their children, once again re- 
sounded through the tents — the signal for flight, and 
this time for a flight more rapid than ever. About 150 
miles ahead of their present position there arose a tract 
of hilly country, forming a sort of margin to the vast sea- 
like expanse of champaign savannahs, steppes, and 
occasionally of sandy deserts, which stretched away 
on each side of this margin both eastward and westward. 
Pretty nearly in the centre of this hilly range lay a nar- 
row defile, through which passed the nearest and the 
most practicable route to the River Torgai (the farther 
bank of which river offered the next great station of 
security for a general halt). It was the more essential 
to gain this pass before the Cossacks inasmuch as, not 
only would the delay in forcing the pass give time to the 
Russian pursuing columns for combining their attacks 
and for bringing up their artillery, but also because 
(even if all enemies in pursuit were thrown out of the 
question) it was held by those best acquainted with the 
difficult and obscure geography of these pathless steppes 
— that the loss of this one narrow strait amongst the hills 



I20 Essays Every Child Should Know 

would have the effect of throwing them (as their only 
alternative in a case where so wide a sweep of pasturage 
was required) upon a circuit of at least 500 miles extra; 
besides that, after all, this circuitous route would carry 
them to the Torgai at a point ill fitted for the passage of 
their heavy baggage. The defile in the hills, therefore, 
it was resolved to gain; and yet, unless they moved upon 
it with the velocity of light cavalry, there was little chance 
but it would be found preoccupied by the Cossacks. 
They also, it is true, had suffered greatly in the bloody 
action with the defeated ouloss; but the excitement of 
victory, and the intense sympathy with their unexampled 
triumph, had again swelled their ranks, and would prob- 
ably act with the force of a vortex to draw in their simple 
countrymen from the Caspian. The question, therefore, 
of preoccupation was reduced to a race. The Cossacks 
were marching upon an oblique line not above 50 miles 
longer than that which led to the same point from the 
Kalmuck headquarters before Koulagina; and there- 
fore, without the most furious haste on the part of the 
Kalmucks, there was not a chance for them, burdened 
and "trashed" as they were, to anticipate so agile a 
light cavalry as the Cossacks in seizing this important 
pass. 

Dreadful were the feelings of the poor women on 
hearing this exposition of the case. For they easily 
understood that too capital an interest (the summa 
rerum) was now at stake, to allow of any regard to minor 
interests, or what could be considered such in their present 
circumstances. The dreadful week already passed — 
their inauguration in misery — was yet fresh in their 
remembrance. The scars of suffering were impressed not 
only upon their memories, but upon their very persons 



Revolt oj the Tartars 

and the persons of their children. And they knew 
that, where no speed had much chance of meeting the 
cravings of the chieftains, no test would be accepted, 
short of absolute exhaustion, that as much had been 
accomplished as could have been accomplished. Wese- 
loff , the Russian captive, has recorded the silent wretched- 
ness with which the women and elder boys assisted in 
drawing the tent-ropes. On the 5th of January all had 
been animation and the joyousness of indefinite expecta- 
tion; now, on the contrary, a brief but bitter experience 
had taught them to take an amended calculation of 
what it was that lay before them. 

One whole day and far into the succeeding night 
had the renewed flight continued; the sufferings had 
been greater than before; for the cold had been more 
intense; and many perished out of the living creatures 
through every class, except only the camels, whose 
powers of endurance seemed equally adapted to cold 
and to heat. The second morning, however, brought 
an alleviation to the distress. Snow had begun to fall; 
and, though not deep at present, it was easily foreseen 
that it soon would be so; and that, as a halt would in 
that case become unavoidable, no plan could be better 
than that of staying where they were; especially as the 
same cause would check the advance of the Cossacks. 
Here then was the last interval of comfort which gleamed 
upon the unhappy nation during their whole migration. 
For ten days the snow continued to fall with little inter- 
mission. At the end of that time keen, bright, frosty 
weather succeeded; the drifting had ceased; in three 
days the smooth expanse became firm enough to support 
the treading of the camels; and the flight was recom- 
menced. But during the halt much domestic comfort 



122 Essays Every Child Should Know 

had been enjoyed, and for the last time universal plenty. 
The cows and oxen had perished in such vast numbers 
on the previous marches that an order was now issued to 
turn what remained to account by slaughtering the whole, 
and salting whatever part should be found to exceed 
the immediate consumption. This measure led to a 
scene of general banqueting and even of festivity amongst 
all who were not incapacitated for joyous emotions by 
distress of mind, by grief for the unhappy experience of 
the few last days, and by anxiety for the too gloomy 
future. Seventy thousand persons of all ages had 
already perished, excusively of the many thousand 
allies who had been cut down by the Cossack sabre. 
And the losses in reversion were likely to be many more. 
For rumours began now to arrive from all quarters, by 
the mounted couriers whom the Khan had despatched 
to the rear and to each flank as well as in advance, that 
large masses of the imperial troops were converging 
from all parts of Central Asia to the fords of the River 
Torgai, as the most convenient point for intercepting 
the flying tribes; and it was by this time well known 
that a powerful division was close in their rear, and was 
retarded only by the numerous artillery which had been 
judged necessary to support their operations. New 
motives were thus daily arising for quickening the motions 
of the wretched Kalmucks, and for exhausting those 
who were already but too much exhausted. 

It was not until the 2d day of February that the Khan's 
advanced guard came in sight of Ouchim, the defile 
among the hills of Mougaldchares, in which they antici- 
pated so bloody an opposition from the Cossacks. A 
pretty large body of these light cavalry had, in fact, pre- 
occupied the pass by some hours; but the Khan having 



Revi 7 of the Tartars ' ' 123 

two great advantages, namely, a strong body of infantry, 
who had been conveyed by sections of five on about 200 
camels, and some pieces of light artillery which he had 
not yet been forced to abandon — soon began to make 
a serious impression upon this unsupported detach- 
ment; and they would probably at any rate have retired; 
but at the very moment when they were making some 
dispositions in that view Zebek-Dorchi appeared upon 
their rear with a body of trained riflemen, who had 
distinguished themselves in the war with Turkey. These 
men had contrived to crawl unobserved over the cliffs 
which skirted the ravine, availing themselves of the dry 
beds of the summer torrents, and other inequalities of 
the ground, to conceal their movement. Disorder and 
trepidation ensued instantly in the Cossack files; the 
Khan, who had been waiting with the elite of his heavy 
cavalry, charged furiously upon them; total overthrow 
followed to the Cossacks, and a slaughter such as in 
some measure avenged the recent bloody extermination 
of their allies, the ancient ouloss of Feka-Zechorr. The 
slight horses of the Cossacks were unable to support the 
weight of heavy Polish dragoons and a body of trained 
cameleers (that is, cuirassiers mounted on camels); 
hardy they were, but not strong, nor a match for their 
antagonists in weight; and their extraordinary efforts 
through the last few days to gain their present position 
had greatly diminished their powers for effecting an 
escape. Very few, in fact, did escape; and the bloody 
day at Ouchim became as memorable amongst the 
Cossacks as that which, about twenty days before, had 
signalised the complete annihilation of the Feka-Zechorr. 
The road was now open to the river Irgitch, and as 
yet even far beyond it to the Torgau; but how long 



1 24 Essays Every Child Should Know 

this state of things would continue was every day more 
doubtful. Certain intelligence was now received that 
a large Russian army, well appointed in every arm, was 
advancing upon the Torgau, under the command of 
General Traubenberg. This officer was to be joined 
on his route by ten thousand Bashkirs and pretty nearly 
the same amount of Kirghises — both hereditary enemies 
of the Kalmucks, both exasperated to a point of madness 
by the bloody trophies which Oubacha and Momotbacha 
had, in late years, won from such of their compatriots 
as served under the Sultan. The Czarina's yoke these 
wild nations bore with submissive patience, but not the 
hands by which it had been imposed; and, accordingly, 
catching with eagerness at the present occasion offered 
to their vengeance, they sent an assurance to the Czarina 
of their perfect obedience to her commands, and at the 
same time a message significantly declaring in what 
spirit they meant to execute them, viz., " that they would 
not trouble her majesty with prisoners." 

Here then arose, as before with the Cossacks, a race 
for the Kalmucks with the regular armies of Russia, 
and concurrently with nations as fierce and semi-human- 
ised as themselves, besides that they had been stung 
into threefold activity by the furies of mortified pride 
and military abasement, under the eyes of the Turkish 
Sultan. The forces, and more especially the artillery, 
of Russia were far too overwhelming to permit the thought 
of a regular opposition in pitched battles, even with a 
less dilapidated state of their resources than they could 
reasonably expect at the period of their arrival on the 
Torgau. In their speed lay their only hope — in strength 
of foot, as before, and not in strength of arm. Onward, 
therefore, the Kalmucks pressed, marking the lines of 



Revolt oj the Tartars 125 

their wide-extending march over the sad solitudes of the 
steppes by a never-ending chain of corpses. The old 
and the young, the sick man on his couch, the mother 
with her baby — all were dropping fast. Such sights as 
these, with the many rueful aggravations incident to 
the helpless condition of infancy — of disease and of 
female weakness abandoned to the wolves amidst a 
howling wilderness, continued to track their course 
through a space of full two thousand miles; for so 
much, at the least, it was likely to prove, including the 
circuits to which they often were compelled by rivers 
or hostile tribes, from the point of starting on the Wolga, 
until they could reach their destined halting ground on 
the east bank of the Torgau. For the first seven weeks 
of this march their sufferings had been embittered by 
the excessive severity of the cold; and every night — 
so long as wood was to be had for fires, either from the 
lading of the camels, or from the desperate sacrifice of 
their baggage-waggons, or (as occasionally happened) 
from the forests which skirted the banks of the many 
rivers which crossed their path — no spectacle was more 
frequent than that of a circle, composed of men, women, 
and children, gathered by hundreds round a central 
fire, all dead and stiff at the return of morning light. 
Myriads were left behind from pure exhaustion, of 
whom none had a chance, under the combined evils 
which beset them, of surviving through the next twenty- 
four hours. Frost, however, and snow at length ceased 
to persecute; the vast extent of the march at length 
brought them into more genial latitudes; and the unusual 
duration of the march was gradually bringing them into 
more genial seasons of the year. Two thousand miles 
had at last been traversed; February, March, April, 



126 Essays Every Child Should Know 

were gone; the balmy month of May had opened; 
vernal sights and sounds came from every side to com- 
fort the heart-weary travellers; and at last, in the latter 
end of May, crossing the Torgau, they took up a position 
where they hoped to find liberty to repose themselves 
for many weeks in comfort as well as in security, and 
to draw such supplies from the fertile neighbourhood 
as might restore their shattered forces to a condition 
for executing, with less of wreck and ruin, the large 
remainder of the journey. 

Yes; it was true that two thousand miles of wan- 
dering had been completed, but in a period of nearly 
five months, and with the terrific sacrifice of at least 
two hundred and fifty thousand souls, to say nothing 
of herds and flocks past all reckoning. These had all 
perished: ox, cow, horse, mule, ass, sheep, or goat, 
not one survived — only the camels. These arid and 
adust creatures, looking like the mummies of some 
antediluvian animals, without the affections or sensi- 
biUties of flesh and blood — these only still erected their 
speaking eyes to the eastern heavens, and had to all 
appearance come out from this long tempest of trial 
unscathed and hardly diminished. The Khan, know- 
ing how much he was individually answerable for the 
misery which had been sustained, must have wept tears 
even more bitter than those of Xerxes, when he threw 
his eyes over the myriads whom he had assembled: for 
the tears of Xerxes were unmingled with compunction. 
Whatever amends were in his power the Khan resolved 
to make, by sacrifices to the general good of all personal 
regards; and, accordingly, even at this point of their 
advance, he once more deliberately brought under review 
the whole question of the revolt. The question was 



Revolt 0} the Tartars 127 

formally debated before the Council, whether, even at 
this point, they should untread their steps, and, throw- 
ing themselves upon the Czarina's mercy, return to their 
old allegiance. In that case, Oubacha professed him- 
self willing to become the scapegoat for the general 
transgression. This, he argued, was no fantastic scheme, 
but even easy of accomplishment; for the unlimited 
and sacred power of the Khan, so well known to the 
Empress, made it absolutely iniquitous to attribute any 
separate responsibility to the people — ^upon the Khan 
rested the guilt, upon the Khan would descend the 
imperial vengeance. This proposal was applauded for 
its generosity, but was energetically opposed by Zebek- 
Dorchi. Were they to lose the whole journey of two 
thousand miles? Was their misery to perish without 
fruit? True it was that they had yet reached only the 
half-way house; but, in that respect, the motives were 
evenly balanced for retreat or for advance. Either 
way they would have pretty nearly the same distance 
to traverse, but with this difference — that, forward, 
their route lay through lands comparatively fertile; 
backward, through a blasted wilderness, rich only in 
memorials of their sorrow, and hideous to Kalmuck 
eyes by the trophies of their calamity. Besides, though 
the Empress might accept an excuse for the past, would 
she the less forbear to suspect for the future? The 
Czarina's pardon they might obtain, but could they 
ever hope to recover her confidence? Doubtless there 
would now be a standing presumption against them, 
an immortal ground of jealousy; and a jealous govern- 
ment would be but another name for a harsh one. Finally, 
whatever motives there ever had been for the revolt 
surely remained unimpaired by anything that had 



1 28 Essays Every Child Should Know 

occurred. In reality, the revolt was, after all, no revolt, 
but (strictly speaking) a return to their old allegiance; 
since, not above one hundred and fifty years ago (viz., 
in the year 16 16), their ancestors had revolted from the 
Emperor of China. They had now tried both govern- 
ments; and for them China was the land of promise, 
and Russia the house of bondage. 

Spite, however, of all that Zebek could say or do, the 
yearning of the people was strongly in behalf of the Khan's 
proposal; the pardon of their prince, they persuaded 
themselves, would be readily conceded by the Empress; 
and there is litde doubt that they would at this time have 
thrown themselves gladly upon the imperial mercy; 
when suddenly all was defeated by the arrival of two 
envoys from Traubenberg. This general had reached 
the fortress of Orsk, after a very painful march, on the 
1 2th of April; thence he set forwards toward Oriem- 
bourg; which he reached upon the ist of June, having 
been joined on his route at various times during the 
month of May by the Kirghises and a corps of ten thou- 
sand Bashkirs. From Oriembourg he sent forward his 
ofl&cial offers to the Khan, which were harsh and per- 
emptory, holding out no specific stipulations as to pardon 
or impunity, and exacting unconditional submission as 
the preliminary price of any cessation from military 
operations. The personal character of Traubenberg, 
which was anything but energetic, and the condition of 
his army, disorganised in a great measure by the length 
and severity of the march, made it probable that, with a 
little time for negotiation, a more conciliatory tone would 
have been assumed. But, unhappily for all parties, 
sinister events occurred in the meantime, such as effect- 
ually put an end to every hope of the kind. 



Revolt of the Tartars 129 

The two envoys sent forward by Traubenberg had 
reported to this officer that a distance of only ten days' 
march lay between his own headquarters and those of 
the Khan. Upon this fact transpiring, the Kirghises, 
by their prince Nourali, and the Bashkirs, entreated the 
Russian general to advance without delay. Once having 
placed his cannon in position, so as to command the 
Kalmuck camp, the fate of the rebel Khan and his people 
would be in his own hands; and they would themselves 
form his advanced guard. Traubenberg, however {why 
has not been certainly explained), refused to march, 
grounding his refusal upon the condition of his army, and 
their absolute need of refreshment. Long and fierce 
was the altercation; but at length, seeing no chance of 
prevailing, and dreading above all other events the 
escape of their detested enemy, the ferocious Bashkirs 
went off in a body by forced marches. In six days they 
reached the Torgau, crossed by swimming their horses, 
and fell upon the Kalmucks, who were dispersed for 
many a league in search of food or provender for their 
camels. The first day's action was one vast succession 
of independent skirmishes, diffused over a field of thirty 
to forty miles in extent; one party often breaking up into 
three or four, and again (according to the accidents of 
ground three or four blending into one; flight and pur- 
suit, rescue and total overthrow, going on simultaneously, 
under all varieties of form, in all quarters of the plain. 
The Bashkirs had found themselves obliged, by the 
scattered state of the Kalmucks, to split up into innum- 
erable sections; and thus, for some hours, it had been 
impossible for the most practised eye to collect the general 
tendency of the day's fortune. Both the Khan and 
Zebek-Dorchi were at one moment made prisoners, and 



130 Essays Every Child Should Know 

more than once in imminent danger of being cut down; 
but at length Zebek succeeded in rallying a strong column 
of infantry, which, with the support of the camel corps 
on each flank, compelled the Bashkirs to retreat. Clouds, 
however, of these wild cavalry continued to arrive through 
the next two days and nights, followed or accompanied by 
the Kirghises. These being viewed as the advanced 
parties of Traubenberg's army, the Kalmuck chieftains 
saw no hope of safety but in flight; and in this way it 
happened that a retreat, which had so recently been 
brought to a pause, was resumed at the very moment when 
the unhappy fugitives were anticipating a deep repose 
without further molestation the whole summer through. 

It seemed as though every variety of wretchedness 
were predestined to the Kalmucks, and as if their suffer- 
ings were incomplete unless they were rounded and 
matured by all that the most dreadful agencies of sum- 
mer's heat could superadd to those of frost and winter. 
To this sequel of their story I shall immediately revert, 
after first noticing a little romantic episode which occurred 
at this point between Oubacha and his unprincipled 
cousin Zebek-Dorchi. 

There was at the time of the Kalmuck flight from the 
Wolga a Russian gentleman of some rank at the court of 
the Khan, whom, for political reasons, it was thought 
necessary to carry along with them as a captive. For 
some weeks his confinement had been very strict, and in 
one or two instances cruel. But, as the increasing distance 
was continually diminishing the chances of escape, and 
perhaps, also, as the misery of the guards gradually 
withdrew their attention from all minor interests to their 
own personal sufferings, the vigilance of the custody grew 
more and more relaxed; until at length, upon a petition 



Revolt of the Tartars 131 

to the Khan, Mr. Weseloff was formally restored to 
liberty; and it was understood that he might use his 
liberty in whatever way he chose, even for returning to 
Russia, if that should be his wish. Accordingly, he was 
making active preparations for his journey to St. Peters- 
burg, when it occurred to Zebek-Dorchi that, not im- 
probably, in some of the battles which were then antici- 
pated with Traubenberg, it might happen to them to lose 
some prisoner of rank, in which case the Russian Weseloff 
would be a pledge in their hands for negotiating an 
exchange. Upon this plea, to his own severe affliction, 
the Russian was detained until the further pleasure of 
the Khan. The Khan's name, indeed, was used through 
the whole affair; but, as it seemed, with so little con- 
currence on his part, that, when Weseloff in a private 
audience humbly remonstrated upon the injustice done 
him, and the cruelty of thus sporting with his feelings by 
setting him at liberty, and, as it were, tempting him into 
dreams of home and restored happiness only for the 
purpose of blighting them, the good-natured prince dis- 
claimed all participation in the affair, and went so far 
in proving his sincerity as even to give him permission to 
effect his escape; and, as a ready means of commencing 
it without raising suspicion, the Khan mentioned to Mr. 
Weseloff that he had just then received a message from 
the Hetman of the Bashkirs, soliciting a private inter- 
view on the banks of the Torgau at a spot pointed out: 
that interview was arranged for the coming night; and 
Mr. Weseloff might go in the Khan's suite, which on 
either side was not to exceed three persons. Weseloff 
was a prudent man, acquainted with the world, and he 
read treachery in the very outline of this scheme, as 
stated by the Khan — treachery against the Khan's 



132 Essays Every Child Should Know 

person. He mused a little, and then communicated so 
much of his suspicions to the Khan as might put him on 
his guard; but, upon further consideration, he begged 
leave to decline the honour of accompanying the Khan. 
The fact was that three Kalmucks, who had strong mo- 
tives for returning to their countrymen on the west bank 
of the Wolga, guessing the intentions of Weseloff, had 
offered to join him in his escape. These men the Khan 
would probably find himself obliged to countenance in 
their project; so that it became a point of honour with 
Weseloff to conceal their intentions, and therefore to 
accomplish the evasion from the camp (of which the 
first steps only would be hazardous) without risking 
the notice of the Khan. 

The district in which they were now encamped 
abounded through many hundred miles with wild horses 
of a docile and beautiful breed. Each of the four fugitives 
had caught from seven to ten of these spirited creatures 
in the course of the last few days: this raised no suspicion, 
for the rest of the Kalmucks had been making the same 
sort of provision against the coming toils of their remain- 
ing route to China. These horses were secured by halters, 
and hidden about dusk in the thickets which lined the 
margin of the river. To these thickets, about ten at 
night, the four fugitives repaired; they took a circuitous 
path, which drew them as little as possible within danger 
of challenge from any of the outposts or of the patrols 
which had been established on the quarters where the 
Bashkirs lay; and in three-quarters of an hour they 
reached the rendezvous. The moon had now risen, 
the horses were unfastened, and they were in the act of 
mounting, when suddenly the deep silence of the woods 
was disturbed by a violent uproar and the clashing of 



Revolt oj the Tartars 133 

arms. Weseloff fancied that he heard the voice of the 
Khan shouting for assistance. He remembered the 
communication made by that prince in the morning; and, 
requesting his compansion to support him, he rode off 
in the direction of the sound. A very short distance 
brought him to an open glade within the wood, where he 
beheld four men contending with a party of at least nine 
or ten. Two of the four were dismounted at the very 
instant of Weseloff 's arrival; one of these he recognised 
almost certainly as the Khan, who was fighting hand to 
hand, but at great disadvantage, with two of the adverse 
horsemen. Seeing that no time was to be lost, Weseloff 
fired and brought down one of the two. His companions 
discharged their carbines at the same moment, and then 
all rushed simultaneously into the little open area. The 
thundering sound of about thirty horses all rushing at 
once into narrow space gave the impression that a whole 
troop of cavalry was coming down upon the assailants, 
who accordingly wheeled about and fled with one impulse. 
Weseloff advanced to the dismounted cavalier, who, as 
he expected, proved to be the Khan. The man whom 
Weseloff had shot was lying dead; and both were shocked, 
though Weseloff at least was not surprised, on stooping 
down and scrutinising his features, to recognise a well- 
known confidential servant of Zebek-Dorchi. Nothing 
was said by either party ; the Khan rode off escorted by 
Weseloff and his companions, and for some time a dead 
silence prevailed. The situation of Weseloff was delicate 
and critical; to leave the Khan at this point was probably 
to cancel their recent services; for he might be again 
crossed on his path, and again attacked by the very 
party from whom he had just been delivered. Yet, on 
the other hand, to return to the camp was to endanger 



134 Essays Every Child Should Know 

the chances of accomplishing the escape. The Khan, 
also, was apparently revolving all this in his mind, for 
at length he broke silence, and said, ''I comprehend 
your situation; and under other circumstances I might 
feel it my duty to detain your companions. But it would 
ill become me to do so after the important service you 
have just rendered me. Let us turn a little to the left. 
There, where you see the watch-fire, is an outpost. 
Attend me so far. I am then safe. You may turn and 
pursue your enterprise; for the circumstances under 
which you will appear, as my escort, are sufficient to 
shield you from all suspicion for the present. I regret 
having no better means at my disposal for testifying my 
gratitude. But tell me before we part — ^Was it accident 
only which led you to my rescue ? Or had you acquired 
any knowledge of the plot by which I was decoyed into 
this snare ? " Weseloff answered very candidly that mere 
accident had brought him to the spot at which he 
heard the uproar, but that, having heard it, and connect- 
ing it with the Khan's communication of the morning, 
he had then designedly gone after the sound in a way 
which he certainly should not have done at so critical a 
moment, unless in the expectation of finding the Khan 
assaulted by assassins. A few minutes after they reached 
the outpost at which it became safe to leave the Tartar 
chieftain; and immediately the four fugitives com- 
menced a flight which is perhaps without a parallel in 
the annals of travelling. Each of them led six or seven 
horses besides the one he rode; and, by shifting from 
one to the other (like the ancient Desultors of the Roman 
circus), so as never to burden the same horse for more 
than half an hour at a time, they continued to advance 
at the rate of 200 miles in the 24 hours for three days 



Revolt of the Tartars 135 

consecutively. After that time, conceiving themselves 
beyond pursuit, they proceeded less rapidly; though 
still with a velocity which staggered the belief of Weseloff 's 
friends in after years. He was, however, a man of high 
principle, and always adhered firmly to the details of his 
printed report. One of the circumstances there stated 
is that they continued to pursue the route by which the 
Kalmucks had fled, never for an instant finding any 
difficulty in tracing it by the skeletons and other memo- 
rials of their calamities. In particular, he mentions vast 
heaps of money as part of the valuable property which it 
had been found necessary to sacrifice. These heaps 
were found lying still untouched in the deserts. From 
these Weseloff and his companions took as much as they 
could conveniently carry; and this it was, with the price 
of their beautiful horses, which they afterwards sold at 
one of the Russian military settlements for about £15 
apiece, which eventually enabled them to pursue their 
journey in Russia. This journey, as regarded Weseloff 
in particular, w^as closed by a tragical catastrophe. He 
was at that time young, and the only child of a doating 
mother. Her affliction under the violent abduction of 
her son had been excessive, and probably had under- 
mined her constitution. Still she had supported it. 
Weseloff, giving way to the natural impulses of his filial 
affection, had imprudently posted through Russia to his 
mother's house without warning of his approach. He 
rushed precipitately into her presence; and she, who 
had stood the shocks of sorrow, was found unequal to 
the shock of joy too sudden and too acute. She died 
upon the spot. 

I now revert to the final scenes of the Kalmuck flight. 
These it would be useless to pursue circumstantially 



136 Essays Every Child Should Know 

through the whole two thousand miles of suffering which 
remained; for the character of that suffering was even 
more monotonous than on the former half of the flight, 
and also more severe. Its main elements were excessive 
heat, with the accompaniments of famine and thirst, but 
aggravated at every step by the murderous attacks of 
their cruel enemies, the Bashkirs and the Kirghises. 

These people, "more fell than anguish, hunger, or 
the sea," stuck to the unhappy Kalmucks like a swarm 
of enraged hornets. And very often, whilst they were 
attacking them in the rear, their advanced parties and 
flanks were attacked with almost equal fury by the 
people of the country which they were traversing; and 
with good reason, since the law of self-preservation had 
now obliged the fugitive Tartars to plunder provisions, 
and to forage wherever they passed. In this respect 
their condition was a constant oscillation of wretchedness; 
for sometimes, pressed by grinding famine, they took a 
circuit of perhaps a hundred miles, in order to strike into 
a land rich in the comforts of life; but in such a land they 
were sure to find a crowded population, of which every 
arm was raised in unrelenting hostility, with all the ad- 
vantages of local knowledge, and with constant pre- 
occupation of all the defensible positions, mountain 
passes, or bridges. Sometimes, again, wearied out with 
this mode of suffering, they took a circuit of perhaps a 
hundred miles, in order to strike into a land with few or 
no inhabitants. But in such a land they were sure to 
meet absolute starvation. Then, again, whether with or 
without this plague of starvation, whether with or with- 
out this plague of hostility in front, whatever might be 
the "fierce varieties" of their misery in this respect, no 
rest ever came to their unhappy rear; post equitem sedet 



Revolt oj the Tartars 137 

atra cura; it was a torment like the undying worm of 
conscience. And, upon the whole, it presented a specta- 
cle altogether unprecedented in the history of mankind. 
Private and personal malignity is not unfrequently 
immortal; but rare indeed is it to find the same perti- 
nacity of maHce in a nation. And what embittered the 
interest was that the malice was reciprocal. Thus far 
the parties met upon equal terms; but that equality only 
sharpened the sense of their dire inequality as to other 
circumstances. The Bashkirs were ready to fight " from 
morn to dewy eve." The Kalmucks, on the contrary, 
were always obliged to run. Was it jrom their enemies 
as creatures whom they feared? No; but toward their 
friends — toward that final haven of China — as what was 
hourly implored by the prayers of their wives, and the 
tears of their children. But, though they fled unwillingly, 
too often they fled in vain — being unwillingly recalled. 
There lay the torment. Every day the Bashkirs fell 
upon them; every day the same unprofitable battle was 
renewed; as a matter of course, the Kalmucks recalled 
part of their advanced guard to fight them; every day 
the battle raged for hours, and uniformly with the same 
result. For no sooner did the Bashkirs find themselves 
too heavily pressed, and that the Kalmuck march had 
been retarded by some hours, than they retired into the 
boundless deserts, where all pursuit was hopeless. But, 
if the Kalmucks resolved to press forward, regardless of 
their enemies, in that case their attacks became so fierce 
and overwhelming that the general safety seemed likely 
to be brought into question; nor could any effectual 
remedy be applied to the case, even for each separate 
day, except by a most embarrassing halt, and by counter- 
marches that, to men in their circumstances, were almost 



138 Essays Every Child Should Know 

worse than death. It will not be surprising that the 
irritation of such a systematic persecution, superadded to 
a previous and hereditary hatred, and accompanied by 
the stinging consciousness of utter impotence as regarded 
all effectual vengeance, should gradually have inflamed 
the Kalmuck animosity into the wildest expression of 
downright madness and frenzy. Indeed, long before 
the frontiers of China were approached, the hostility of 
both sides had assumed the appearance much more of a 
warfare amongst wild beasts than amongst creatures 
acknowledging the restraints of reason or the claims of a 
common nature. The spectacle became too atrocious; it 
was that of a host of lunatics pursued by a host of fiends. 

On a fine morning in early autumn of the year 177 1, 
Kien Long, the Emperor of China, was pursuing his 
amusements in a wild frontier district lying on the outside 
of the Great Wall. For many hundred square leagues 
the country was desolate of inhabitants, but rich in woods 
of ancient growth, and overrun with game of every 
description. In a central spot of this solitary region the 
Emperor had built a gorgeous hunting lodge, to which 
he resorted annually for recreation and relief from the 
cares of government. Led onward in pursuit of game, he 
had rambled to a distance of 200 miles or more from this 
lodge, followed at a little distance by a sufficient military 
escort, and every night pitching his tent in a different 
situation, until at length he had arrived on the very mar- 
gin of the vast central deserts of Asia. Here he was 
standing by accident at an opening of his pavilion, enjoy- 
ing the morning sunshine, when suddenly to the west- 
ward there arose a vast, cloudy vapour, which by degrees 
expanded, mounted, and seemed to be slowly diffusing 



Revolt of the Tartars 139 

itself over the whole face of the heavens. By and by 
this vast sheet of mist began to thicken toward the 
horizon, and to roll forward in billowy volumes. The 
Emperor's suit assembled from all quarters. The silver 
trumpets were sounded in the rear, and from all the 
glades and forest avenues began to trot forward toward 
the pavilion the yagers — half cavalry, half huntsmen — 
who composed the imperial escort. Conjecture was 
on the stretch to divine the cause of this phenomenon, 
and the interest continually increased, in proportion as 
simple curiosity gradually deepened into the anxiety 
of uncertain danger. At first it had been imagined 
that some vast troops of deer, or other wild animals of 
the chase, had been disturbed in their forest haunts by 
the Emperor's movements, or possibly by wild beasts 
prowling for prey, and might be fetching a compass by 
way of re-entering the forest grounds at some remoter 
points secure from molestation. But this conjecture was 
dissipated by the slow increase of the cloud, and the 
steadiness of its motion. In the course of two hours the 
vast phenomenon had advanced to a point which was 
judged to be within five miles of the spectators, though 
all calculations of distance were difl&cult, and often fal- 
lacious, when applied to the endless expanses of the 
Tartar deserts. Through the next hour, during which 
the gentle morning breeze had a little freshened, the 
dusty vapour had developed itself far and wide into the 
appearance of huge aerial draperies, hanging in mighty 
volumes from the sky to the earth; and at particular 
points, where the eddies of the breeze acted upon the 
pendulous skirts of these aerial curtains, rents were 
perceived, sometimes taking the form of regular arches, 
portals and windows, through which began dimly to 



140 Essays Every Child Should Know 

gleam the heads of camels "indorsed" with human beings 
— and at intervals the moving of men and horses in 
tumultuous array — and then through other openings or 
vistas at far distant points the flashing of polished arms. 
But sometimes, as the wind slackened or died away, all 
those openings, of whatever form, in the cloudy pall 
would slowly close, and for a time the whole pageant 
was shut up from view; although the growing din, the 
clamours, shrieks and groans, ascending from infuriated 
myriads reported, in a language not to be misunderstood, 
what was going on behind the cloudy screen. 

It was in fact the Kalmuck host, now in the last extrem- 
ities of their exhaustion, and very fast approaching to 
that final stage of privation and killing misery beyond 
which few or none could have lived, but also, happily 
for themselves, fast approaching (in a literal sense) that 
final stage of their long pilgrimage at which they would 
meet hospitality on a scale of royal magnificence, and 
full protection from their enemies. These enemies, 
however, as yet were still hanging on their rear as fiercely 
as ever, though this day was destined to be the last of 
their hideous persecution. The Khan had, in fact, sent 
forward couriers with all the requisite statements and 
petitions addressed to the Emperor of China. These 
had been duly received, and preparations made in con- 
sequence to welcome the Kalmucks with the most paternal 
benevolence. But, as these couriers had been despatched 
from the Torgau at the moment of arrival thither, and 
before the advance of Traubenberg had made it necessary 
for the Khan to order a hasty renewal of the flight, the 
Emperor had not looked for their arrival on his frontiers 
until full three months after the present time. The 
Khan had indeed expressly notified his intention to pass 



Revolt oj the Tartars 141 

the summer heats on the banks of the Torgau, and to 
recommence his retreat about the beginning of Septem- 
ber. The subsequent change of plan, being unknown 
to Kien Long, left him for some time in doubt as to the 
true interpretation to be put upon this mighty apparition 
in the desert, but at length the savage clamours of 
hostile fury, and the clangour of weapons, unveiled to 
the Emperor the true nature of those unexpected calam- 
ities which had so prematurely precipitated the Kalmuck 

measures. 

Apprehending the real state of affairs, the Emperor 
instantly perceived that the first act of his fatherly care 
for these erring children (as he esteemed them), now 
returning to their ancient obedience, must be— to deliver 
them from their pursuers. And this was less difficult 
than might have been supposed. Not many miles m 
the rear was a body of well-appointed cavalry, with a 
strong detachment of artillery, who always attended the 
Emperor's motions. These were hastily summoned. 
Meantime it occurred to the train of courtiers that some 
danger might arise to the Emperor's person from the 
proximity of a lawless enemy; and accordingly he was 
induced to retire a little to the rear. It soon appeared, 
however, to those who watched the vapoury shroud in 
the desert, that its motion was not such as would argue 
the direction of the march to be exactly upon the pavilion 
but rather in a diagonal line, making an angle of full 
.c degrees with that line in which the imperial cortege 
had been standing, and therefore with a distance con- 
tinually increasing. Those who knew the country 
judged that the Kalmucks were making for a large 
fresh-water lake about seven or eight miles distant. 
They were right: and to that point the imperial cavalry 



142 Essays Every Child Should Know 

was ordered up; and it was precisely in that spot, and 
about three hours after, and at noonday on the 8th of 
September, that the great Exodus of the Kalmuck 
Tartars was brought to a final close, and with a scene 
of such memorable and hellish fury as formed an appro- 
priate winding up to an expedition in all its parts and 
details so awfully disastrous. The Emperor was not 
personally present, or at least he saw whatever he did 
see from too great a distance to discriminate its individual 
features; but he records in his written memorial the 
report made to him of this scene by some of his own 
ofi&cers. 

The Lake of Tengis, near the dreadful desert of 
Kobi, lay in a hollow amongst hills of a moderate height, 
ranging generally from two to three thousand feet high. 
About eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the Chinese cavalry 
reached the summit of a road which led through a cradle- 
like dip in the mountains right down upon the margin 
of the lake. From this pass, elevated about two thou- 
sand feet above the level of the water, they continued to 
descend, by a very winding and difficult road, for an 
hour and a half; and during the whole of this descent 
they were compelled to be inactive spectators of the 
fiendish spectacle below. The Kalmucks, reduced by 
this time from about six hundred thousand souls to two 
hundred and sixty thousand, and after enduring for 
so long a time the miseries I have previously described 
— outrageous heat, famine, and the destroying scimitar 
of the Kirghises and the Bashkirs — had for the last ten 
days been traversing a hideous desert, where no vestiges 
were seen of vegetation, and no drop of water could be 
found. Camels and men were already so overladen that 
it was a mere impossibility that they should carry a 



Revolt oj the Tartars 143 

tolerable sufficiency for the passage of this frightful 
wilderness. On the eighth day, the wretched daily 
allowance, which had been continually diminishing, 
failed entirely; and thus, for two days of insupportable 
fatigue, the horrors of thirst had been carried to the 
fiercest extremity. Upon this last morning, at the 
sight of the hills and the forest scenery, which announced 
to those who acted as guides the neighbourhood of the 
Lake of Tengis, all the people rushed along with madden- 
ing eagerness to the anticipated solace. The day grew 
hotter and hotter, the people more and more exhausted, 
and gradually, in the general rush forward to the lake, 
all discipline and command were lost — all attempts to 
preserve a rearguard were neglected — the wild Bashkirs 
rode in amongst the encumbered people, and slaughtered 
them by wholesale, and almost without resistance. 
Screams and tumultuous shouts proclaimed the prog- 
ress of the massacre; but none heeded — none halted; 
all alike, pauper or noble, continued to rush on with 
maniacal haste to the waters — ^all with faces blackened 
by the heat preying upon the liver, and with tongue droop- 
ing from the mouth. The cruel Bashkir was affected 
by the same misery, and manifested the same symptoms 
of his misery, as the wretched Kalmuck; the murderer 
was oftentimes in the same frantic misery as his mur- 
dered victim — many indeed (an ordinary effect of thirst) 
in both nations had become lunatic, and in this state, 
whilst mere multitude and condensation of bodies alone 
opposed any check to the destroying scimitar and the 
trampling hoof, the lake was reached; and into that the 
whole vast body of enemies rushed, and together con- 
tinued to rush, forgetful of all things at that moment but 
of one almighty instinct. This absorption of the thoughts 



144 Essays Every Child Should Know 

in one maddening appetite lasted for a single half -hour 5 
but in the next arose the final scene of parting vengeance. 
Far and wide the waters of the solitary lake were instantly- 
dyed red with blood and gore : here rode a party of savage 
Bashkirs, hewing off heads as fast as the swaths fall 
before the mower's scythe; there stood unarmed Kal- 
mucks in a death-grapple with their detested foes, both 
up to the middle in water, and oftentimes both sinking 
together below the surface, from weakness or from 
struggles, and perishing in each other's arms. Did 
the Bashkirs at any point collect into a cluster for the 
sake of giving impetus to the assault? Thither were 
the camels driven in fiercely by those who rode them, 
generally women or boys; and even these quiet creatures 
were forced into a share in this carnival of murder, by 
trampling down as many as they could strike prostrate 
with the lash of their fore-legs. Every moment the water 
grew more polluted; and yet every moment fresh myriads 
came up to the lake and rushed in, not able to resist their 
frantic thirst, and swallowing large draughts of water 
visibly contaminated with the blood of their slaughtered 
compatriots. Wheresoever the lake was shallow enough 
to allow of men raising their heads above the water, 
there, for scores of acres, were to be seen all forms of 
ghastly fear, of agonising struggle, of spasm, of death, 
and the fear of death — revenge, and the lunacy of revenge 
— until the neutral spectators, of whom there were not a 
few, now descending the eastern side of the lake, at 
length averted their eyes in horror. This horror, which 
seemed incapable of further addition, was, however, 
increased by an unexpected incident. The Bashkirs, 
beginning to perceive here and there the approach of 
the Chinese cavahy, felt it prudent — wheresoever they 



Revolt of the Tartars 145 

were sufficiently at leisure from the passions of the mur- 
derous scene — to gather into bodies. This was noticed 
by the governor of a small Chinese fort, built upon an 
eminence above the lake; and immediately he threw in 
a broadside, which spread havoc amongst the Bashkir 
tribe. As often as the Bashkirs collected into ^^ globes ^^ 
and "ttirms,^' as their only means of meeting the long 
line of descending Chinese cavalry — so often did the 
Chinese governor of the fort pour in his exterminating 
broadside; until at length the lake, at its lower end, 
became one vast seething caldron of human bloodshed 
and carnage. The Chinese cavalry had reached the 
foot of the hills; the Bashkirs, attentive to their move- 
ments, had formed; skirmishes had been fought: and, 
with a quick sense that the contest was henceforward 
rapidly becoming hopeless, the Bashkirs and Kirghises 
began to retire. The pursuit was not as vigorous as the 
Kalmuck hatred would have desired. But, at the same 
time, the very gloomiest hatred could not but find, in 
their own dreadful experience of the Asiatic deserts, 
and in the certainty that these wretched Bashkirs had 
to repeat that same experience a second time, for thou- 
sands of miles, as the price exacted by a retributory 
Providence for their vindictive cruelty — not the very 
gloomiest of the Kalmucks, or the least reflecting, but 
found in all this retaliatory chastisement more complete 
and absolute than any which their swords and lances could 
have obtained, or human vengeance could have devised. 

Here ends the tale of the Kalmuck wanderings in 
the Desert; for any subsequent marches which awaited 
them were neither long nor painful. Every possible 
alleviation and refreshment for their exhausted bodies 



146 Essays Every Child Should Know 

had been already provided by Kien Long with the most 
princely munificence; and lands of great fertility were 
immediately assigned to them in ample extent along 
the river Ily, not very far from the point at which they 
had first emerged from the wilderness of Kobi. But the 
beneficent attention of the Chinese Emperor may be 
best stated in his own words, as translated into French 
by one of the Jesuit missionaries: — "La nation des 
Torgotes (savoir les Kalmuques) arriva a Ily, toute 
delabree, n'ayant ni de quoi vivre, ni de quoi se vetir. 
Je I'avais prevu; et j'avais ordonne de faire en tout 
genre les provisions necessaires pour pouvoir les secourir 
promptement: c'est ce qui a ete execute. On a fait la 
division des terres, et on a assign^ a chaque famille une 
portion suffisante pour pouvoir servir a son entretien, soit 
en la cultivant, soit en y nourissant des bestiaux. On a 
donne a chaque particulier des etoffes pour I'habiller, 
des grains pour se nourrir pendant I'espace d'une annee, 
des ustensiles pour le menage, et d'autres choses neces- 
saires: et outre cela plusieurs onces d'argent, pour se 
pourvoir de ce qu'on aurait pu oublier. On a designe 
des lieux particuliers, fertiles en paturages; et on leur 
a donne des boeufs, moutons, etc., pour qu'ils pussent 
dans la suite travailler par eux-memes a leur entretien 
et a leur bien-etre.'* 

These are the words of the Emperor himself, speaking 
in his own person of his own paternal cares; but another 
Chinese, treating the same subject, records the munifi- 
cence of this prince in terms which proclaim still more 
forcibly the disinterested generosity which prompted, 
and the delicate considerateness which conducted, this 
extensive bounty. He has been speaking of the Kal- 
mucks, and he goes on thus: — "Lorsqu'ils arriverent 



Revolt of the Tartars 147 

sur nos frontieres (au nombre de plusieurs centaines de 
mille, quoique la fatigue extreme, la faim, la soif, et 
toutes les autres incommodites inseparables d'une tres- 
longue et tres penilbe route en eussent fait perir presque 
autant), ils etaient reduits a la derniere misere; ils 
manquaient de tout. 11" [viz., I'Empereur, Kien Long] 
*' leur fit preparer des logemens conformes a leur maniere 
de vivre: il leur fit distribuer des alimens et des habits; 
il leur fit donner des boeufs, des moutons, et des usten- 
siles, pour les mettre en etat de former des troupeaux 
et de cultiver la terre, et tout cela a ses propres frais, 
qui se sont montes a des sommes immenses, sans compter 
I'argent qu'il a donne a chaque chef-de-famille, pour 
pourvoir a la subsistance de sa femme et de ses enfans." 
Thus, after their memorable year of misery, the 
Kalmucks were replaced in territorial possessions, and 
in comfort equal perhaps, or even superior, to that which 
they had enjoyed in Russia, and with superior political 
advantages. But, if equal or superior, their condition 
was no longer the same; if not in degree, their social 
prosperity had altered in quality; for, instead of being 
a purely pastoral and vagrant people, they were now 
in circumstances which obliged them to become essen- 
tially dependent upon agriculture; and thus far raised in 
social rank, that, by the natural course of their habits 
and the necessities of life, they were effectually reclaimed 
from roving and from the savage customs connected with 
a half nomadic life. They gained also in political 
privileges, chiefly through the immunity from military 
service which their new relations enabled them to obtain. 
These were circumstances of advantage and gain. But 
one great disadvantage there was, amply to overbalance 
all other possible gain: the chances were lost or were 



148 Essays Every Child Should Know 

removed to an incalculable distance for their conversion 
to Christianity, without which, in these times, there is no 
absolute advance possible on the path of true civilisation. 
One word remains to be said upon the personal interests 
concerned in this great drama. The catastrophe in 
this respect was remarkable and complete. Oubacha, 
with all his goodness and incapacity of suspecting, had, 
since the mysterious affair on the banks of the Torgau, 
felt his mind alienated from his cousin : he revolted from 
the man that would have murdered him; and he had 
displayed his caution so visibly as to provoke a reaction 
in the bearing of Zebek-Dorchi, and a displeasure which 
all his dissimulation could not hide. This had pro- 
duced a feud, which, by keeping them aloof, had prob- 
ably saved the life of Oubacha; for the friendship of 
Zebek-Dorchi was more fatal than his open enmity. 
After the settlement on the Ily this feud continued to 
advance, until it came under the notice of the Emperor, 
on occasion of a visit which all the Tartar chieftains 
made to his Majesty at his hunting lodge in 1772. The 
Emperor informed himself accurately of all the particulars 
connected with the transaction — of all the rights and 
claims put forward — and of the way in which they would 
severally affect the interests of the Kalmuck people. 
The consequence was that he adopted the cause of 
Oubacha, and repressed the pretensions of Zebek- 
Dorchi, who, on his part, so deeply resented this dis- 
countenance to his ambitious projects, that, in conjunction 
with other chiefs, he had the presumption even to weave 
nets of treason against the Emperor himself. Plots were 
laid, were detected, were baffled; counterplots were 
constructed upon the same basis, and with the benefits 
of the opportunities thus offered. 



Revolt of the Tartars 149 

Finally, Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial 
lodge, together with all his accomplices; and, under 
the skilful management of the Chinese nobles in the 
Emperor's establishment, the murderous artifices of 
these Tartar chieftains were made to recoil upon them- 
selves; and the whole of them perished by assassination 
at a great imperial banquet. For the Chinese morality 
is exactly of that kind which approves in every thing the 
lex talionis: 

" Lex nee justior uUa est (as they think) 



Quam necis artifices arte perire sua." 

So perished Zebek-Dorchi, the author and originator 
of the great Tartar Exodus. Oubacha, meantime, 
and his people, were gradually recovering from the effects 
of their misery, and repairing their losses. Peace and 
prosperity, under the gentle rule of a fatherly lord 
paramount, redawned upon the tribes: their household 
lares, after so harsh a translation to distant climes, found 
again a happy reinstatement in what had, in fact, been 
their primitive abodes: they found themselves settled 
in quiet sylvan scenes, rich in all the luxuries of life, and 
endowed with the perfect loveliness of Arcadian beauty. 
But from the hills of this favoured land, and even from 
the level grounds as they approached its western border, 
they still look out upon that fearful wilderness which 
once beheld a nation in agony — the utter extirpation of 
nearly half a million from amongst its numbers, and, 
for the remainder, a storm of misery so fierce that in the 
end (as happened also at Athens during the Peloponne- 
sian War from a different form of misery) very many 
lost their memory: all records of their past life were 
wiped out as with a sponge — utterly erased and 



150 Essays Every ChUd Should Know 

cancelled: and many others lost their reason; some in a 
gentle form of pensive melancholy, some in a more 
restless form of feverish delirium and nervous agitation, 
and others in the fixed forms of tempestuous mania, 
raving frenzy, or moping idiocy. Two great commemora- 
tive monuments arose in after years to mark the depth 
and permanence of the awe — the sacred and reverential 
grief, with which all persons looked back upon the dread 
calamities attached to the year of the tiger — all who had 
either personally shared in those calamities and had 
themselves drunk from that cup of sorrow, or who had 
effectually been made witnesses to their results and 
associated with their relief: two great monuments; one 
embodied in the religious solemnity, enjoined by the 
Dalai Lama, called in the Tartar language a Romanang 
— that is, a national commemoration, with music the 
most rich and solemn, of all the souls who departed to 
the rest of Paradise from the afflictions of the Desert 
(this took place about six years after the arrival in China) ; 
secondly, another, more durable and more commensurate 
to the scale of the calamity and to the grandeur of this 
national Exodus, in the mighty columns of granite and 
brass erected by the Emperor Kien Long near the banks 
of the Ily. These columns stand upon the very margin 
of the steppes; and they bear a short but emphatic in- 
scription to the following effect: — 

By the Will of God. 

Here, upon the Brink of these Deserts, 

Which from this Point begin and stretch away 

Pathless, treeless, waterless. 

For thousands of miles — and along the margins of many mighty 

Nations, 

Rested from their labours and from great aflflictions, 

Under the shadow of the Chinese Wall, 



Revolt of the Tartars 151 

And by the favour of Kien Long, God's Lieutenant upon Earth, 
The ancient Children of the Wilderness — the Torgote Tartars — 

Flying before the wrath of the Grecian Czar, 

"Wandering Sheep who had strayed away from the Celestial 

Empire in the year 161 6 

But are now mercifully gathered again, after infinite sorrow. 

Into the fold of their forgiving Shepherd. 

Hallowed be the spot forever, 

and 

Hallowed be the day — September 8, 1771 I 

Amen. 

— Thomas De Quincey. 



CINDERS FROM THE ASHES 

THE personal revelations contained in my report of 
certain breakfast-table conversations were so 
charitably listened to and so good-naturedly interpre-ted, 
that I may be in danger of becoming over-communica- 
tive. Still, I should never have ventured to tell the trivial 
experiences here thrown together, were it not that my 
brief story is illuminated here and there by a glimpse of 
some shining figure that trod the same path with me for 
a time, or crossed it, leaving a momentary or lasting 
brightness in its track. I remember that, in furnishing 
a chamber some years ago, I was struck with its dull 
aspect as I looked round on the black-walnut chairs and 
bedstead and bureau. "Make me a large and hand- 
somely wrought gilded handle to the key of that dark 
chest of drawers," I said to the furnisher. It was done, 
and that one luminous point redeemed the sombre 
apartment as the evening star glorifies the dusky firma- 
ment. So, my loving reader— and to none other can 
such table-talk as this be addressed — I hope there will 
be lustre enough in one or other of the names with which 
I shall gild my page to redeem the dulness of all that is 
merely personal in my recollections. 

After leaving the school of Dame Prentiss, best re- 
membered by infantine loves, those pretty preludes of 
more serious passions; by the great forfeit-basket, filled 
with its miscellaneous waifs and deodands, and by the 

152 



Cinders jrom the Ashes 153 

long willow stick by the aid of which the good old body, 
now stricken in years and unwieldy in person, could 
stimulate the sluggish faculties or check the mischievous 
sallies of the child most distant from her ample chair — 
a school where I think my most noted schoolmate was 
the present Bishop of Delaware — I became the pupil 
of Master William Biglow. This generation is not 
familiar with his tide to renown, although he fills three 
columns and a half in Mr. Duyckinck's "Cyclopaedia 
of American Literature." He was a humourist hardly 
robust enough for more than a brief local immortality. 
I am afraid we were an undistinguished set, for I do not 
remember anybody near a bishop in dignity graduating 
from our benches. 

At about ten years of age I began going to what we 
always called the "Port School," because it was kept 
at Cambridgeport, a mile from the College. This 
surburb was at that time thinly inhabited, and, being 
much of it marshy and imperfectly reclaimed, had a 
dreary look as compared with the thriving College set- 
tlement. The tenants of the many beautiful mansions 
that have sprung up along Main Street, Harvard Street, 
and Broadway can hardly recall the time when, except 
the "Dana House" and the "Opposition House" and 
the " Clark House," these roads were almost all the way 
bordered by pastures until we reached the "stores" 
of Main Street, or were abreast of that forlorn "First 
Row" of Harvard Street. We called the boys of that 
locality "Port-chucks." They called us "Cambridge- 
chucks," but we got along very well together in the main. 

Among my schoolmates at the Port School was a 
young girl of singular loveliness. I once before referred 
to her as " the golden blonde," but did not trust myself 



154 Essays Every Child Should Know 

to describe her charms. The day of her appearance in 
the school was almost as much a revelation to us boys 
as the appearance of Miranda was to Caliban. Her 
abounding natural curls were so full of sunshine, her 
skin was so delicately white, her smile and her voice 
were so all-subduing, that half our heads were turned. 
Her fascinations were everywhere confessed a few years 
afterwards; and when I last met her, though she said 
she was a grandmother, I questioned her statement, 
for her winning looks and ways would still have made 
her admired in any company. 

Not far from the golden blonde were two small boys, 
one of them very small, perhaps the youngest boy in 
school, both ruddy, sturdy, quiet, reserved, sticking 
loyally by each other, the oldest, however, beginning 
to enter into social relations with us of somewhat maturer 
years. One of these two boys was destined to be widely 
known, first in literature, as author of one of the most 
popular books of its time and which is freighted for a 
long voyage; then as an eminent lawyer; a man who, 
if his countrymen are wise, will yet be prominent in the 
national councils. Richard Henry Dana, Junior, is 
the name he bore and bears; he found it famous, and 
will bequeath it a fresh renown. 

Sitting on the girls' benches, conspicuous among the 
schoolgirls of unlettered origin by that look which rarely 
fails to betray hereditary and congenital culture, was a 
young person very nearly of my own age. She came 
with the reputation of being " smart," as we should have 
called it, clever as we say nowadays. This was Margaret 
Fuller, the only one among us who, like " Jean Paul," 
like " The Duke," Hke " Bettina," has slipped the cable 
of the more distinctive name to which she was anchored, 



Cinders jrom the Ashes 155 

and floats on the waves of speech as " Margaret." Her 
air to her schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness 
and distance, as if she had other thoughts than theirs 
and was not of them. She was a great student and a 
great reader of what she used to call "naw-vels." I 
remember her so well as she appeared at school and 
later, that I regret that she had not been faithfully given 
to canvas or marble in the day of her best looks. None 
know her aspect who have not seen her living. Margaret, 
as I remember her at school and afterward, was tall, 
fair complexioned, with a watery, aquamarine lustre in 
her light eyes, which she used to make small, as one does 
who looks at the sunshine. A remarkable point about 
her was that long, flexile neck, arching and undulating 
in strange sinuous movements, which one who loved her 
would compare to those of a swan, and one who loved 
her not to those of the ophidian who tempted our com- 
mon mother. Her talk was affluent, magisterial, de 
haul en has, some would say euphuistic, but surpassing 
the talk of women in breadth and audacity. Her face 
kindled and reddened and dilated in every feature as she 
spoke, and, as I once saw her in a fine storm of indig- 
nation at the supposed ill-treatment of a relative, showed 
itself capable of something resembling what Milton calls 
the viraginian aspect. 

Little incidents bear telling when they recall any- 
thing of such a celebrity as Margaret. I remember 
being greatly awed once, in our school-days, with the 
maturity of one of her expressions. Some themes were 
brought home from the school for examination by my 
father, among them one of hers. I took it up with a 
certain emulous interest (for I fancied at that day that 
I too had drawn a prize, say a five-dollar one, at least, 



156 Essays Every Child Should Know 

in the great intellectual life-lottery) and read the first 
words. 

" It is a trite remark," she began. 

I stopped. Alas! I did not know what trite meant. 
How could I ever judge Margaret fairly after such a 
crushing discovery of her superiority? I doubt if I 
ever did; yet oh, how pleasant it would have been, at 
about the age, say, of threescore and ten, to rake over 
these ashes for cinders with her — she in a snowy cap, 
and I in a decent peruke! 

After being five years at the Port School, the time 
drew near when I was to enter college. It seemed ad- 
visable to give me a year of higher training, and for that 
end some public school was thought to offer advantages. 
Phillips Academy at Andover was well known to us. We 
had been up there, my father and myself, at anniversaries. 
Some Boston boys of well-known and distinguished 
parentage had been scholars there very lately — Master 
Edmund Quincy, Master Samuel Hurd Walley, Master 
Nathaniel Parker Willis — ^all promising youth, who 
fulfilled their promise. 

I do not believe there was any thought of getting a 
little respite of quiet by my temporary absence, but I 
have wondered that there was not. Exceptional boys 
of fourteen or fifteen make home a heaven, it is true; 
but I have suspected, late in life, that I was not one of 
the exceptional kind. I had tendencies in the direction 
of flageolets and octave flutes. I had a pistol and a gun, 
and popped at everything that stirred, pretty nearly, 
except the house-cat. Worse than this, I would buy a 
cigar and smoke it by instalments, putting it meantime 
in the barrel of my pistol, by a stroke of ingenuity which 
it gives me a grim pleasure to recall; for no maternal or 



Cinders jrom the Ashes 157 

other female eyes would explore the cavity of that dread 
implement in search of contraband commodities. 

It was settled, then, that I should go to Phillips Aca- 
demy, and preparations were made that I might join 
the school at the beginning of the autumn. 

In due time I took my departure in the old carriage, 
a little modernised from the pattern of my Lady Boun- 
tiful's, and we jogged soberly along — kind parents and 
slightly nostalgic boy — toward the seat of learning, some 
twenty miles away. Up the old West Cambridge road, 
now North Avenue; past Davenport's tavern, with its 
sheltering tree and swinging sign; past the old powder- 
house, looking like a colossal conical ball set on end; 
past the old Tidd House, one of the finest of the ante- 
Revolutionary mansions; past Miss Swan's great square 
boarding-school, where the music of girlish laughter 
was ringing through the windy corridors; so on to Stone- 
ham, town of the bright lake, then darkened with the 
recent memory of the barbarous murder done by its 
lonely shore; through pleasant Reading, with its oddly 
named village centres — "Trapelo," " Read'nwoodeend," 
as rustic speech had it, and the rest ; through Wilmington, 
then renowned for its hops; so at last into the hallowed 
borders of the academic town. 

It was a shallow, two-story white house before which 
we stopped, just at the entrance of the central village, 
the residence of a very worthy professor in the theo- 
logical seminary — learned, amiable, exemplary, but 
thought by certain experts to be a little questionable 
in the matter of homoousianism, or some such doctrine. 
There was a great rock that showed its round back in the 
narrow front yard. It looked cold and hard; but it 
hinted firmness and indifference to the sentiments fast 



158 Essays Every Child Should Know 

struggling to get uppermost in my youthful bosom; for 
I was not too old for home-sickness — who is? The 
carriage and my fond companions had to leave me at 
last. I saw it go down the declivity that sloped south- 
ward, then climb the next ascent, then sink gradually 
until the window in the back of it disappeared like an 
eye that shuts, and leaves the world dark to some 
widowed heart. 

Sea-sickness and home-sickness are hard to deal with 
by any remedy but time. Mine was not a bad case, 
but it excited sympathy. There was an ancient, faded 
old lady in the house, very kindly, but very deaf, rust- 
ling about in dark autumnal foliage of silk or other 
murmurous fabric, somewhat given to snuff, but a very 
worthy gentlewoman of the poor-relation variety. She 
comforted me, I well remember, but not with apples, 
and stayed me, but not with flagons. She went in her 
benevolence, and, taking a blue and white soda-powder, 
mingled the same in water, and encouraged me to drink 
the result. It might be a specific for sea-sickness, but 
it was not for home-sickness. The fiz was a mockery, 
and the saline refrigerant struck a colder chill to my 
despondent heart. I did not disgrace myself, however, 
and a few days cured me, as a week on the water often 
cures sea-sickness. 

There was a sober-faced boy of minute dimensions 
in the housj, who began to make some advances to me, 
and who, in spite of all the conditions surrounding him, 
turned out, on better acquaintance, to be one of the 
most amusing, free-spoken, mocking little imps I ever 
met in my life. My room-mate came later. He was 
the son of a clergyman in a neighbouring town — in fact 
I may remark that I knew a good many clergymen's 



Cinders jrom the Ashes 159 

sons at Andover. He and I went in harness together as 
well as most boys do, I suspect; and I have no grudge 
against him, except that once, when I was slightly in- 
disposed, he administered to me — with the best inten- 
tions, no doubt — a dose of Indian pills, which effectually 
knocked me out of time, as Mr. Morrissey would say, 
not quite into eternity, but so near it that I perfectly 
remember one of the good ladies told me (after I had 
come to my senses a little, and was just ready for a sip 
of cordial and a word of encouragement), with that 
delightful plainness of speech which so brings realities 
home to the imagination, that " I never should look any 
whiter when I was laid out as a corpse." After my 
room-mate and I had been separated twenty-five years, 
fate made us fellowtownsmen and acquaintances once 
more in Berkshire, and now again we are close literary 
neighbours; for I have just read a very pleasant article, 
signed by him, in the last number of the "Galaxy." 
Does it not sometimes seem as if we were all marching 
round and round in a circle, like the supernumeraries 
w^ho constitute the "army" of a theatre, and that each 
of us meets and is met by the same and only the same 
people, or their doubles, twice, thrice, or a little oftener, 
before the curtain drops and the "army" puts ofi its 
borrowed clothes? 

The old Academy building had a dreary look, with 
its flat face, bare and uninteresting as our own "Uni- 
versity Building" at Cambridge, since the piazza which 
relieved its monotony was taken away, and, to balance 
the ugliness thus produced, the hideous projection was 
added to " Harvard Hall." Two masters sat at the end 
of the great room — the principal and his assistant. Two 
others presided in separate rooms — one of them the late 



i6o Essays Every Child Should Know 

Rev. Samuel Horatio Stearns, an excellent and lovable 
man, who looked kindly on me, and for whom I always 
cherished a sincere regard — a clergyman's son, too, which 
privilege I did not always find the warrant of signal 
virtues; but no matter about that here, and I have 
promised myself to be amiable. 

On the side of the long room was a large clock-dial, 
bearing these words: — 

YOUTH IS THE SEED TIME OF LIFE. 

I had indulged in a prejudice, up to that hour, that 
youth was the budding time of life, and this clock-dial, 
perpetually twitting me with its seedy moral, always 
had a forbidding look to my vernal apprehension. 

I was put into a seat with an older and much bigger 
boy, or youth, with a fuliginous complexion, a dilating 
and whitening nostril, and a singularly malignant scowl. 
Many years afterwards he committed an act of murderous 
violence, and ended by going to finish his days in a mad- 
house. His delight was to kick my shins with all his 
might, under the desk, not at all as an act of hostility, 
but as a gratifying and harmless pastime. Finding 
this, so far as I was concerned, equally devoid of pleasure 
and profit, I managed to get a seat by another boy, the 
son of a very distinguished divine. He was bright enough 
and more select in his choice of recreations, at least dur- 
ing school hours, than my late homicidal neighbour. 
But the principal called me up presently, and cautioned 
me against him as a dangerous companion. Could it 
be so ? If the son of that boy's father could not be trusted 
what boy in Christendom could? It seemed like the 
story of the youth doomed to be slain by a lion before 
reaching a certain age, and whose fate found him out 



Cinders jrom the Ashes 



i6i 



in the heart of the tower where his father had shut him 
up for safety. Here was I, in the very dove's nest of 
Puritan faith, and out of one of its eggs a serpent had 
been hatched and was trying to nestle in my bosom! 
I parted from him, however, none the worse for his com- 
panionship so far as I can remember. 

Of the boys who were at school with me at Andover 
one has acquired great distinction among the scholars 
of the land. One day I observed a new boy m a seat not 
very far from my own. He was a Uttle fellow, as I 
recollect him, with black hair and very bright black 
eyes, when at length I got a chance to look at them. 
Of all the new-comers during my whole year he was 
the only one whom the first glance fixed in my memory, 
but there he is now, at this moment, just as he caught 
my eye on the morning of his entrance. His head 
was between his hands (I wonder if he does not some- 
times study in that same posture nowadays!) and his 
eyes were fastened to his book as if he had been read- 
ing a will that made him heir to a million. I feel sure 
that Professor Horatio Balch Hackett will not find fault 
with me for writing his name under this inoffensive 
portrait. Thousands of faces and forms that I have 
known more or less familiarly have faded ^om my 
remembrance, but this presentment of the youthful 
student, sitting there entranced over the page of his 
text-book-the child-father of the distinguished scholar 
that was to be-is not a picture framed and hung up 
in my mind's gallery, but a fresco on its walls, there to 
remain so long as they hold together. 

My especial intimate was a fine, rosy-faced boy, not 
quite so free of speech as myself, perhaps, but with 
qualities that promised a noble manhood, and ripened 



i62 Essays Every Child Should Know 

into it in due season. His name was Phinehas Barnes, 
and, if he is inquired after in Portland or anywhere in 
the State of Maine, something will be heard to his ad- 
vantage from an honest and intelligent citizen of that 
Commonwealth who answers the question. This was 
one of two or three friendships that lasted. There 
were other friends and classmates, one of them a natural 
humorist of the liveliest sort, who would have been 
quarantined in any Puritan port, his laugh was so potently 
contagious. 

Of the noted men of Andover the one whom I remem- 
ber best was Professor Moses Stuart. His house was 
nearly opposite the one in which I resided and I often 
met him and listened to him in the chapel of the Seminary. 
I have seen few more striking figures in my life than his, 
as I remember it. Tall, lean, with strong, bold features, 
a keen, scholarly, accipitrine nose, thin, expressive lips, 
great solemnity and impressiveness of voice and manner, 
he was my early model of a classic orator. His air was 
Roman, his neck long and bare like Cicero's, and his 
toga — that is his broadcloth cloak — was carried on his 
arm, whatever might have been the weather, with such 
a statue-like rigid grace that he might have been turned 
into marble as he stood, and looked noble by the side of 
the antiques of the Vatican. 

Dr. Porter was an invalid, with the prophetic hand- 
kerchief bundling his throat, and his face "festooned" 
— ^as I heard Hillard say once, speaking of one of our 
College professors — in folds and wrinkles. Ill health 
gives a certain common character to all faces, as Nature 
has a fixed course which she follows in dismantling a 
human countenance: the noblest and the fairest is but 
a death's-head decently covered over for the transient 



Cinders jrom the Ashes 163 

ceremony of life, and the drapery often falls half off 
before the procession has passed. 

Dr. Woods looked his creed more decidedly, perhaps, 
than any of the Professors. He had the firm fibre of a 
theological athlete, and lived to be old without ever 
mellowing, I think, into a kind of half-heterodoxy, as 
old ministers of stern creed are said to do now and then — 
just as old doctors grow to be sparing of the more exas- 
perating drugs in their later days. He had manipulated 
the mysteries of the Infinite so long and so exhaustively, 
that he would have seemed more at home among the 
mediaeval schoolmen than amidst the working clergy 
of our own time. 

All schools have their great men, for whose advent 
into life the world is waiting in dumb expectancy. In 
due time the world seizes upon these wondrous youth, 
opens the shell of their possibilities like the valves of 
an oyster, swallows them at a gulp, and they are for 
the most part heard of no more. We had two great 
men, grown up both of them. Which was the more 
awful intellectual power to be launched upon society, 
we debated. Time cut the knot in his rude fashion by 
taking one away early, and padding the other with pros- 
perity so that his course was comparatively noiseless 
and ineffective. We had our societies, too; one in 
particular, "The Social Fraternity," the dread 
secrets of which I am under a lifelong obligation 
never to reveal. The fate of William Morgan, which 
the community learned not long after this time, re- 
minds me of the danger of the ground upon which I am 
treading. 

There were various distractions to make the time not 
passed in study a season of relief. One good lady, I 



164 Essays Every Child Should Know 

was told, was in the habit of asking students to her house 
on Saturday afternoons and praying with and for them. 
Bodily exercise was not, however, entirely superseded 
by spiritual exercises, and a rudimentary form of base- 
ball and the heroic sport of football were followed with 
some spirit. 

A slight immature boy finds his materials of thought 
and enjoyment in very shallow and simple sources. 
Yet a kind of romance gilds for me the sober ta^ble-land 
of that cold New England hill where I came in contact 
with a world so strange to me, and destined to leave 
such mingled and lasting impressions. I looked across 
the valley to the hillside where Methuen hung suspended, 
and dreamed of its wooded seclusion as a village paradise. 
I tripped lightly down the long northern slope with 
jacilis descensus on my lips, and toiled up again, repeating 
sed revocare gradum. I wandered in the autumnal 
woods that crown the " Indian Ridge," much wondering 
at that vast embankment, which we young philosophers 
believed with the vulgar to be of aboriginal workmanship, 
not less curious, perhaps, since we call it an escar, and 
refer it to alluvial agencies. The little Shawshine was 
our swimming-school, and the great Merrimack, the 
right arm of four toiling cities, was within reach of a 
morning stroll. At home we had the small imp to make 
us laugh at his enormities, for he spared nothing in his 
talk, and was the drollest little living protest against 
the prevailing solemnities of the locality. It did not 
take much to please us, I suspect, and it is a blessing 
that this is apt to be so with young people. What else 
could have made us think it great sport to leave our warm 
beds in the middle of winter and "camp out" — on the 
floor of our room — ^with blankets disposed tent-wise, 



Cinders jrom the Ashes i65 

except the fact that to a boy a new discomfort in place 
of an old comfort is often a luxury. 

More exciting occupation than any of these was to 
watch one of the preceptors to see if he would not drop 
dead while he was praying. He had a dream one mght 
that he should, and looked upon it as a warning, and 
told it round very seriously, and asked the boys to con^e 
and visit him in turn, as one whom they were soon to 
lose. More than one boy kept his eye on h.m dur ng 
his public devotions, possessed by the same feehng he 
man had who followed Van Amburgh about with the 
expectation, let us not say the hope, of seemg the hon 
bite his head off sooner or later. _ 

Let me not forget to recall the mterestmg visit to 
Haverhill with my room-mate, and how he led me to 
the mighty bridge over the Merrimack which defied 
the ice rafts of the river; and to the old meetmg-house, 
where in its porch, I saw the door of the ancient par- 
roni with the bullet-hole in it through which Ben.amm 
Rolfe the minister, was shot by the Indians on the 
.qth of August, 1708. What a vision it was when I 
Twl in the morning to see the fog on ^e nver -m- 
ing as if it wrapped the towers and spires of a great 
cit'l-for such was my fancy, and whether it was a 
mirage of youth or a fantastic natural effect I hate to 

TrU-ttformances at Andover if any read, 
who may have survived so far cares to know, included 
Itranslltion from Virgil, out of which I ™ber tin 
couplet, which had the inevitable cockney rhyme of 
beginners: 

Thus by the power of Jove's imperial arm 
The boiling ocean trembled into calm. 



1 66 Essays Every Child Should Know 

Also a discussion with Master Phinehas Barnes on the 
case of Mary, Queen of Scots, which he treated argument- 
atively and I rhetorically and sentimentally. My sentences 
were praised and his conclusions adopted. Also an 
Essay, spoken at the great final exhibition, held in the 
large hall upstairs, which hangs oddly enough from the 
roof, suspended by iron rods. Subject, Fancy. Treat- 
ment, brief but comprehensive, illustrating the magic 
power of that brilliant faculty in charming life 
into forgetfulness of all the ills that flesh is heir 
to — the gift of Heaven to every condition and every 
clime, from the captive in his dungeon to the mon- 
arch on his throne; from the burning sands of the 
desert to the frozen icebergs of the poles, from — but I 
forget myself. 

This was 'the last of my coruscations at Andover. 
I went from the Academy to Harvard College, and did 
not visit the sacred hill again for a long time. 

On the last day of August, 1867, not having been 
at Andover for many years, I took the cars at noon, and 
in an hour or a little more found myself at the station, 
just at the foot of the hill. My first pilgrimage was to 
the old elm, which I remembered so well as standing by 
the tavern, and of which they used to tell the story that 
it held, buried in it by growth, the iron rings put round 
it in the old time to keep the Indians from chopping it 
with their tomahawks. I then began the once familiar 
toil of ascending the long declivity. Academic villages 
seem to change very slowly. Once in a hundred years 
the library burns down with all its books. A new edifice 
or two may be put up, and a new library begun in the 
course of the same century; but these places are poor, 



Cinders jrom the Ashes 167 

for the most part, and cannot afford to pull down their 
old barracks. 

These sentimental journeys to old haunts must be 
made alone. The story of them must be told succinctly. 
It is like the opium-smoker's showing you the pipe from 
which he has just inhaled elysian bliss, empty of the 
precious extract which has given him his dream. 

I did not care much for the new Academy buildmg 
on my right, nor for the new library building on my 
left. But for these it was surprising to see how little 
the scene I remembered in my boyhood had changed. 
The Professor's houses looked just as they used to, and 
the stage-coach landed its passengers at the Mansion 
House as of old. The pale brick seminary buildmgs 
were behind me on the left, looking as if "Hollis" and 
"Stoughton" had been transplanted from Cambridge- 
carried there in the night by orthodox angels, perhaps, 
like the Santa Casa. Away to my left again, but abreast 
of me, was the bleak, bare old Academy building; and 
in front of me stood unchanged the shallow oblong white 
house where I lived a year in the days of James Monroe 
and of John Quincy Adams. 

The ghost of a boy was at my side as I wandered 
among the places he knew so well. I went to the front 
of the house. There was the great rock showmg its 
broad back in the front yard. I used to crack nuts on 
that whispered the small ghost. I looked in at the upper 
window in the farther part of the house. / looked out 
of that on jour long changing seasons, said the ghost. 
I should have liked to explore farther, but, while I was 
looking, one came into the small garden, or what used 
to be the garden, in front of the house, and I desisted 
from my investigation and went on my way. The 



1 68 Essays Every Child Should Know 

apparition that put me and my little ghost to flight had 
a dressing-gown on its person and a gun in its hand. I 
think it was the dressing-gown, and not the gun, which 
drove me off. 

And now here is the shop, or store, that used to be 
Shipman's, after passing what I think used to be Jona- 
than Leavitt's bookbindery, and here is the back road 
that will lead me around by the old Academy building. 

Could I believe my senses when I found that it was 
turned into a gymnasium, and heard the low thunder 
of ninepin balls, and the crash of tumbling pins from 
those precincts? The little ghost said. Never! It can- 
not he. But it was. "Have they a billiard-room in 
the upper story?" I asked myself. "Do the theological 
professors take a hand at all-fours or poker on week- 
days, now and then, and read the secular columns of 
the Boston Recorder on Sundays?" I was demoralised 
for the moment, it is plain; but now that I have recovered 
from the shock, I must say that the fact mentioned 
seems to show a great advance in common sense from 
the notions prevailing in my time. 

I sauntered — ^we, rather, my ghost and I — until we 
came to a broken field where there was quarrying and 
digging going on — our old base-ball ground, hard by the 
burial-place. There I paused; and if any thoughtful 
boy who loves to tread in the footsteps that another has 
sown with memories of the time when he was young shall 
follow my footsteps, I need not ask him to rest here 
a while, for he will be enchained by the noble view before 
him. Far to the north and west the mountains of New 
Hampshire lifted their summits in a long encircling 
ridge of pale blue waves. The day was clear, and every 
mound and peak traced its outline with perfect definition 



Cinders from the Ashes 169 

against the sky. This was a sight which had more virtue 
and refreshment in it than any aspect of natui;"e that I 
had looked upon, I am afraid I must say for years. I 
have been by the seaside now and then, but the sea is 
constantly busy with its own affairs, running here and 
there, listening to what the winds have to say and getting 
angry with them, always indifferent, often insolent, and 
ready to do a mischief to those who seek its companion- 
ship. But these still, serene, unchanging mountains 
— Monadnock, Kearsarge — what memories that name 
recalls! and the others, the dateless Pyramids of New 
England, the eternal monuments of her ancient race, 
around which cluster the homes of so many of her bravest 
and hardiest children — I can never look at them without 
feeling that, vast and remote and awful as they are, there 
is a kind of inward heat and muffled throb in their 
stony cores, that brings them into a vague sort of sym- 
pathy with human hearts. It is more than a year since 
I have looked on those blue mountains, and they "are 
to me as a feeling" now, and have been ever since. 

I had only to pass a wall and I was in the burial- 
ground. It was thinly tenanted as I remember it, but 
now populous with the silent immigrants of more than 
a whole generation. There lay the dead I had left — 
the two or three students of the Seminary; the son of 
the worthy pair in whose house I lived, for whom in 
those days hearts were still aching, and by whose memory 
the house still seemed haunted. A few upright stones 
were all that I recollect. But now, around them were 
the monuments of many of the dead whom I remembered 
as living. I doubt if there has been a more faithful reader 
of these graven stones than myself for many a long day. 
I listened to more than one brief sermon from preachers 



lyo Essays Every Child Should Know 

whom I had often heard as they thundered their doctrines 
down upon me from the throne-like desk. Now they 
spoke humbly out of the dust, from a narrower pulpit, 
from an older text than any they ever found in Cruden's 
Concordance, but there was an eloquence in their voices 
the listening chapel had never known. There were 
stately monuments and studied inscriptions, but none 
so beautiful, none so touching, as that which hallows 
the resting-place of one of the children of the very- 
learned Professor Robinson: "Is it well with the child ? 
And she answered. It is well." 

While I was musing amidst these scenes in the mood 
of Hamlet, two old men, as my little ghost called them, 
appeared on the scene to answer to the grave-digger and 
his companion. They christened a mountain or two for 
me, " Kearsarge " among the rest, and revived some 
old recollections, of which the most curious was " BasiFs 
Cave." The story was recent, when I was there, of one 
Basil, or Bezill, or Buzzell, or whatever his name might 
have been, a member of the Academy, fabulously rich, 
Orientally extravagant, and of more or less lawless 
habits. He had commanded a cave to be secretly dug, 
and furnished it sumptuously, and there with his com- 
panions indulged in revelries such as the daylight of that 
consecrated locality had never looked upon. How much 
truth there was in it all I will not pretend to say, but I 
seem to remember stamping over every rock that sounded 
hollow, to question if it were not the roof of what was once 
Basil's Cave. 

The sun was getting far past the meridian, and I sought 
a shelter under which to partake of the hermit fare I had 
brought with me. Following the slope of the hill north- 
ward behind the cemetery, I found a pleasant clump of 



Cinders from the Ashes 171 

trees grouped about some rocks, disposed so as to give a 
table, and a shade. I left my benediction on this pretty 
little natural caravanserai, and a brief record on one of 
its white birches, hoping to visit it again on some sweet 
summer or autumn day. 

Two scenes remained to look upon — the Shawshine 
River and the Indian Ridge. The streamlet proved to 
have about the width with which it flowed through my 
memory. The young men and the boys were bathing 
in its shallow current, or dressing and undressing upon 
its banks as in the days of old; the same river, only the 
water changed; "The same boys, only the names and 
the accidents of local memory different," I whispered to 
my little ghost. 

The Indian Ridge more than equalled what I expected 
of it. It is well worth a long ride to visit. The lofty 
wooded bank is a mile and a half in extent, with other 
ridges in its neighbourhood, in general running nearly 
parallel with it, one of them still longer. These singular 
formations are supposed to have been built up by the 
eddies of conflicting currents scattering sand and gravel 
and stones as they swept over the continent. But I 
think they pleased me better when I was taught that the 
Indians built them; and while I thank Professor Hitch- 
cock, I sometimes feel as if I should like to found a chair 
to teach the ignorance of what people do not want to 
know. 

"Two tickets to Boston," I said to the man at the 
station. 

But the little ghost whispered, " When you leave this 
place you leave me behind you.'^ 

"One ticket to Boston, if you please. Good-bye, 
little ghost." 



172 Essays Every Child Should Know 

I believe the boy-shadow still lingers around the well- 
remembered scenes I traversed on that day, and that, 
whenever I revisit them, I shall find him again as my 
companion. 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



XT 

RAIN IN THE GARRET* 

IT IS an old garret with big, brown rafters; and the 
boards between are stained darkly with the rain- 
storms of fifty years. And as the sportive April shower 
quickens its flood, it seems as if its torrents would come 
dashing through the shingles, upon you, and upon your 
play. But it will not; for you know that the old roof 
is strong; and that it has kept you, and all that love you, 
for long years from the rain, and from the cold; you know 
that the hardest storms of winter will only make a little 
oozing leak, that trickles down the brown stains — like 
tears. 

You love that old garret roof; and you nestle down 
under its slope, with a sense of its protecting power that 
no castle walls can give to your maturer years. Ay, 
your heart clings in boyhood to the roof-tree of the old 
family garret, with a grateful affection, and an earnest 
confidence, that the after-years — whatever may be their 
successes or their honours — can never re-create. Under 
the roof-tree of his home, the boy feels safe: and where, 
in the whole realm of life, with its bitter toil, and its 
bitterer temptations, will he feel safe again ? 

But this you do not know. It seems only a grand old 
place; and it is capital fun to search in its corners, and 
drag out some bit of quaint old furniture, with a leg 

* From " Dream Life." Copyright, 1851, 1863, 1883, by Donald G. Mitchell. 
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons. 

173 



174 Essays Every Child Should Know 

broken, and lay a cushion across it, and fix your reins 
upon the lion's claws of the feet, and then — gallop away ! 
And you offer sister Nelly a chance, if she will be good; 
and throw out very patronising words to little Charlie, 
who is mounted upon a much humbler horse — to wit, 
a decrepit nursery-chair — ^as he of right should be, since 
he is three years your junior. 

I know no nobler forage ground for a romantic, ven- 
turesome, mischievous boy, than the garret of an old 
family mansion, on a day of storm. It is a perfect field 
of chivalry. The heavy rafters, and dashing rain, the 
piles of spare mattresses to carouse upon, the big trunks 
to hide in, the old white coats and hats hanging in obscure 
corners like ghosts — are great! And it is so far away 
from the old lady, who keeps rule in the nursery, that there 
is no possible risk of a scolding, for twisting off the fringe 
of the rug. There is no baby in the garret to wake up. 
There is no "company" in the garret to be disturbed 
by the noise. There is no crotchety old Uncle, or 
Grand-Ma, with their everlasting — "Boys — boys!" — 
and then a look of such horror ! 

There is great fun in groping through a tall barrel of 
books and pamphlets, on the look-out for startling 
pictures; and there are chestnuts in the garret, drying, 
which you have discovered on a ledge of the chimney; 
and you slide a few into your pocket, and munch them 
quietly — giving now and then one to Nelly, and begging 
her to keep silent — for you have a great fear of its being 
forbidden fruit. 

Old family garrets have their stock, as I said, of cast- 
away clothes, of twenty years gone by; and it is rare 
sport to put them on; buttoning in a pillow or two for 
the sake of good fulness; and then to trick out Nelly in 



Rain in the Garret 17^ 

some strange-shaped head-gear, and old-fashioned 
brocade petticoat caught up with pins; and in such guise, 
to steal cautiously down stairs, and creep slily into the 
sitting-room — ^lialf afraid of a scolding, and very sure of 
good fun; — trying to look very sober, and yet almost 
ready to die with the laugh that you know you will make. 
And your mother tries to look harshly at little Nelly for 
putting on her grandmother's best bonnet; but Nelly's 
laughing eyes forbid it utterly; and the mother spoils all 
her scolding with a perfect shower of kisses. 

After this, you go marching, very stately, into the 
nursery; and utterly amaze the old nurse; and make a 
deal of wonderment for the staring, half-frightened baby, 
who drops his rattle, and makes a bob at you, as if he 
would jump into your waistcoat pocket. 

But you grow tired of this; you tire even of the swing, 
and of the pranks of Charlie; and you glide away into a 
corner, with an old, dog's-eared copy of Robinson Crusoe. 
And you grow heart and soul into the story, until you 
tremble for the poor fellow with his guns, behind the 
palisade; and are yourself half dead with fright, when 
you peep cautiously over the hill with your glass, and see 
the cannibals at their orgies around the fire. 

Yet, after all, you think the old fellow must have had 
a capital time, with a whole island to himself; and you 
think you would like such a time yourself, if only Nelly, 
and Charlie, could be there with you. But this thought 
does not come till afterward; for the time, you are nothing 
but Crusoe; you are living in his cave with Poll the parrot, 
and are looking out for your goats and man Friday. 

You dream what a nice thing it would be, for you to 
slip away some pleasant morning — not to York, as young 
Crusoe did, but to New York — and take passage as a 



176 Essays Every Child Should Know 

sailor; and how, if they knew you were going, there 
would be such a world of good-byes; and how, if they 
did not know it, there would be such a world of wonder ! 

And then the sailor's dress would be altogether such a 
jaunty affair; and it would be such rare sport to lie off 
upon the yards far aloft, as you have seen sailors in pic- 
tures, looking out upon the blue and tumbling sea. No 
thought now, in your boyish dreams, of sleety storms, and 
cables stiffened with ice, and crashing spars, and great 
icebergs towering fearfully around you! 

You would have better luck than even Crusoe; you 
would save a compass, and a Bible, and stores of hatchets, 
and the captain's dog, and great puncheons of sweetmeats 
(which Crusoe altogether overlooked); and 3^ou would 
save a tent or two, which you could set up on the shore, 
and an American flag, and a small piece of cannon, which 
you could fire as often as you liked. At night, you would 
sleep in a tree — though you wonder how Crusoe did it — 
and would say the prayers you had been taught to say at 
home, and fall to sleep — dreaming of Nelly and Charlie. 

At sunrise, or thereabouts, you would come down, 
feeling very much refreshed; and make a very nice 
breakfast off of smoked herring and sea-bread, with a 
little currant jam and a few oranges. After this you 
would haul ashore a chest or two of the sailors' clothes, 
and putting a few large jack-knives in your pocket, 
would take a stroll over the island, and dig a cave some- 
where, and roll in a cask or two of sea-bread. And you 
fancy yourself growing after a time very tall and corpu- 
lent, and wearing a magnificent goat-skin cap, trimmed 
with green ribbons, and set off with a plume. You think 
you would have put a few more guns in the palisade than 
Crusoe did, and charged them with a little more grape. 



Rain in the Garret 177 

After a long while, you fancy a ship would arrive, which 
would carry you back; and you count upon very great 
surprise on the part of your father, and little Nelly, as 
you march up to the door of the old family mansion, with 
plenty of gold in your pocket, and a small bag of cocoanuts 
for Charlie, and with a great deal of pleasant talk about 
your island, far away in the South Seas. 

—Or, perhaps it is not Crusoe at all, that your eyes 
and your heart cling to, but only some little story about 
Paul and Virginia. That dear little Virginia! how many 
tears have been shed over her— not in garrets only, or 
by boys only ! 

You would have liked Virginia— you know you would; 
but you perfectly hate the beldame aunt, who sent for 
her to come to France; you think she must have been 
like the old school-mistress, who occasionally boxes your 
ears with the cover of the spelling-book, or makes you 
wear one of the girl's bonnets, that smells strongly of 
paste-board, and calico. 

As for black Domingue, you think he was a capital 
old fellow; and you think more of him, and his bananas, 
than you do of the bursting, throbbing heart of poor Paul. 
As yet. Dream-life does not take hold on love. A little 
maturity of heart is wanted, to make up what the poets 
call sensibility. If love should come to be a dangerous, 
chivalric matter, as in the case of Helen Mar and Wallace, 
you can very easily conceive of it, and can take hold of 
all the little accessories of male costume, and embroider- 
ing of banners; but as for pure sentiment, such as lies in 
the sweet story of Bernardin de St. Pierre, it is quite 
beyond you. 

The rich, soft nights, in which one might doze in his 
hammock, watching the play of the silvery moonbeams 



178 Essays Every Child Shoidd Know 

upon the orange leaves and upon the waves, you can 
understand; and you fall to dreaming of that lovely Isle 
of France; and wondering if Virginia did not perhaps 
have some relations on the island, who raise pine-apples, 
and such sort of things, still ? 

— ^And so, with your head upon your hand, in your 
quiet garret corner, over some such beguiling story, your 
thought leans away from the book, into your own dreamy 
cruise over the sea of life. 

— Donald G. Mitchell. 



XII 

SCHOOL DREAMS* 

IT IS a proud thing to go out from under the realm 
of a schoolmistress, and to be enrolled in a com- 
pany of boys who are under the guidance of a master. 
It is one of the earliest steps of worldly pride, which has 
before it a long and tedious ladder or ascent. Even 
the advice of the old mistress, and the nine-penny book 
that she thrusts into your hand as a parting gift, pass for 
nothing; and her kiss of adieu, if she tenders it in the 
sight of your fellows, will call up an angry rush of blood 
to the cheek, that for long years shall drown all sense 
of its kindness. 

You have looked admiringly many a day upon the tall 
fellows who play at the door of Dr. Bidlow's school: 
you have looked with reverence, second only to that 
felt for the old village church, upon its dark-looking 
heavy brick walls. It seemed to be redolent of learning; 
and stopping at times, to gaze upon the gallipots and 
broken retorts, at the second story window, you have 
pondered, in your boyish way, upon the inscrutable 
wonders of Science, and the ineffable dignity of Dr. 
Bidlow's brick school! 

Dr. Bidlow seems to you to belong to a race of giants; 
and yet he is a spare, thin man, with a hooked nose, a 
large, flat, gold watch-key, a crack in his voice, a wig, 

*From " Dream Life." Copyright, 1851, 1863, 1883, by Donald G. Mitchell. 
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons. 

179 



i8o Essays Every Child Should Know 

and very dirty wristbands. Still you stand in awe at 
the mere sight of him; — ^an awe that is very much encour- 
aged by a report made to you by a small boy — that " Old 
Bid" keeps a large ebony ruler in his desk. You are 
amazed at the small boy's audacity: it astonishes you 
that any one who had ever smelt the strong fumes of 
sulphur and ether in the Doctor's room, and had seen 
him turn red vinegar blue (as they say he does), should 
call him "Old Bid!" 

You, however, come very little under his control: 
you enter upon the proud life, in the small boy's depart- 
ment — ^under the dominion of the English master. He 
is a different personage from Dr. Bidlow: he is a dapper 
little man, who twinkles his eye in a peculiar fashion, 
who has a way of marching about the school-room with 
his hands crossed behind him, giving a playful flirt to 
his coat-tails. He wears a pen tucked behind his ear: 
his hair is carefully set up at the sides, and upon the top, 
to conceal (as you think later in life) his diminutive 
height; and he steps very springily around behind the 
benches, glancing now and then at the books — cautioning 
one scholar about his dogs-ears, and starting another 
from a doze, by a very loud and odious snap of his fore- 
finger upon the boy's head. 

At other times, he sticks a hand in the armlet of his 
waistcoat: he brandishes in the other a thickish bit of 
smooth cherry-wood — sometimes dressing his hair withal; 
and again, giving his head a slight scratch behind the 
ear, while he takes occasion at the same time for an 
oblique glance at a fat boy in the corner, who is reaching 
down from his seat after a little paper pellet, that has 
just been discharged at him from some unknown quarter. 
The master steals very cautiously and quickly to the 



School Dreams i8i 

rear of the stooping boy — dreadfully exposed by his 
unfortunate position — and inflicts a stinging blow. A 
weak-eyed little scholar on the next bench ventures a 
modest titter; at which the assistant makes a significant 
motion with his ruler — on the seat, as it were, of an 
imaginary pair of pantaloons — which renders the weak- 
eyed boy, on a sudden, very insensible to the recent joke. 

You, meantime, profess to be very much engrossed 
with your grammar — turned upside down: you think 
it must have hurt; and are only sorry that it did not 
happen to a tall, dark-faced boy who cheated you in a 
swop of jack-knives. You innocently think that he 
must be a very bad boy ; and fancy — aided by a suggestion 
of the old nurse at home, on the same point — that he 
will one day come to the gallows. 

There is a platform on one side of the school-room, 
where the teacher sits at a little red table, and they have 
a tradition among the boys, that a pin, properly bent, 
was one day put into the chair of the English master, and 
that he did not wear his hand in the armlet of his waist- 
coat for two whole days thereafter. Yet his air of dignity 
seems proper enough in a man of such erudition, and 
such grasp of imagination, as he must possess. For he 
can quote poetry — some of the big scholars have heard 
him do it: — he can parse the whole of Paradise Lost; 
and he can cipher in Long Division, and the Rule of 
Three, as if it was all Simple Addition; and then — 
such a hand as he writes, and such a superb capital B! 
It is hard to understand how he does it. 

Sometimes, lifting the lid of your desk, where you pre- 
tend to be very busy with your papers, you steal the 
reading of some brief passage of Lazy Lawrence, or of 
the Hungarian Brothers, and muse about it for hours 



i82 Essays Every Child Should Know 

afterward, to the great detriment of your ciphering; or, 
deeply lost in the story of the Scottish Chiefs, you fall 
to comparing such villains as Menteith with the stout 
boys who tease you; and you only wish they could come 
within reach of the fierce Kirkpatrick's claymore. 

But you are frightened out of this stolen reading by a 
circumstance that stirs your young blood very strangely. 
The master is looking very sourly on a certain morn- 
ing, and has caught sight of the little weak-eyed boy 
over beyond you, reading Roderick Random. He 
sends out for a long birch rod, and having trimmed 
off the leaves carefully — with a glance or two in your 
direction — he marches up behind the bench of the 
poor culprit — who turns deathly pale — grapples him 
by the collar, drags him out over the desks, his limbs 
dangling in a shocking way against the sharp angles, 
and having him fairly in the middle of the room, clinches 
his rod with a new, and, as it seems to you, a very 
sportive grip. 

You shudder fearfully. 

"Please don't whip me," says the boy whimpering. 

"Aha!" says the smirking pedagogue, bringing down 
the stick with a quick, sharp cut — " you don't like it, eh ? " 

The poor fellow screams, and struggles to escape; 
but the blows come faster and thicker. The blood 
tingles in your finger ends with indignation. 

"Please don't strike me again," says the boy sobbing 
and taking breath, as he writhes about the legs of the 
master; — "I won't read another time." 

"Ah, you won't, sir — ^won't you? I don't mean 
you shall, sir," and the blows fall thick and fast — until 
the poor fellow crawls back, utterly crest-fallen and 
heart-sick, to sob over his books. 



School Dreams 183 

You grow into a sudden boldness: you wish you were 
only large enough to beat the master: you know such 
treatment would make you miserable: you shudder 
at the thought of it: you do not believe he would dare: 
you know the other boy has got no father. This seems 
to throw a new light upon the matter, but it only inten- 
sifies your indignation. You are sure that no father 
would suffer it; or if you thought so, it would sadly 
weaken your love for him. You pray Heaven that it 
may never be brought to such proof. 

(Let a boy once distrust the love or the tenderness 
of his parents, and the last resort of his yearning affec- 
tions — so far as the world goes — is utterly gone. He 
is in the sure road to a bitter fate.) His heart will take 
on a hard iron covering, that will flash out plenty of fire 
in his after contact with the world, but it will never — 
never melt! 

There are some tall trees that overshadow an angle 
of the school-house: and the larger scholars play some 
very surprising gymnastic tricks upon their lower limbs: 
one boy, for instance, will hang for an incredible length 
of time by his feet, with his head down; and when you 
tell Charlie of it at night, with such additions as your 
boyish imagination can contrive, the old nurse is shocked, 
and states very gravely that it is dangerous; and that 
the blood all runs to the head, and sometimes bursts out 
of the eyes and mouth. You look at that particular boy 
with astonishment afterward; and expect to see him 
some day burst into bleeding from the nose and ears, 
and flood the school-room benches. 

In time, however, you get to performing some modest 
experiments yourself upon the very lowest limbs, — 
taking care to avoid the observation of the larger boys, 



184 Essays Every Child Should Know 

who else might laugh at you: you especially avoid the 
notice of one stout fellow in pea-green breeches, who 
is a sort of "bully" among the small boys, and who 
delights in kicking your marbles about, very accidentally. 
He has a fashion too of twisting his handkerchief into 
what he calls a " snapper," with a knot at the end, and 
cracking at you with it, very much to the irritation of 
your spirits, and of your legs. 

Sometimes, when he has brought you to an angry 
burst of tears, he will very graciously force upon you 
the handkerchief, and insist upon your cracking him in 
return; which, as you know nothing about his effective 
method of making a knot bite, is a very harmless 
proposal on his part. 

But you have still stronger reason to remember that 
boy. There are trees, as I said, near the school; and 
you get the reputation after a time of a good climber. 
One day you are well in the tops of the trees, and being 
dared by the boys below, you venture higher — ^higher 
than any boy has ever gone before. You feel very 
proudly; but just then catch sight of the sneering face 
of your old enemy of the snapper; and he dares you to 
go upon, a limb that he points out. 

The rest say — for you hear them plainly — "it won't 
bear him." And Frank, a great friend of yours, shouts 
loudly to you — not to try. 

"Pho," says your tormentor — "the little coward!" 

If you could whip him, you would go down the tree 
and do it willingly: as it is, you cannot let him tri- 
umph: so you advance cautiously out upon the limb: 
it bends and sways fearfully with your weight : presently 
it cracks: you try to return, but it is too late: you feel 
yourself going: — ^your mind flashes home — over your 



School Dreams 185 

life— your hope— your fate, like lightning: then comes 
a sense of dizziness— a succession of quick blows, and a 
dull, heavy crash! 

You are conscious of nothing again, until you find 
yourself in the great hall of the school, covered with 
blood, the old Doctor standing over you with a phial, 
and Frank kneeling by you, and holding your shattered 
arm, which has been broken by the fall. 

After this, come those long, weary days of confine- 
ment, when you lie still, through all the hours of noon, 
looking out upon the cheerful sunshine only through 
the windows of your little room. Yet it seems a grand 
thing to have the whole household attendant upon you. 
The doors are opened and shut softly, and they all step 
noiselessly about your chamber; and when you groan 
with pain, you are sure of meeting sad, sympathising 
looks. Your mother will step gently to your side and 
lay her cool, white hand upon your forehead; and litde 
Nelly will gaze at you from the foot of your bed with a 
sad earnestness, and with tears of pity in her soft hazel 
eyes. And afterward, as your pain passes away, she 
will bring you her prettiest books, and fresh flowers, 
and whatever she knows you will love. 

But it is dreadful, when you wake at night from your 
feverish slumber, and see nothing but the spectral shad- 
ows that the sick-lamp upon the hearth throws aslant 
the walls; and hear nothing but the heavy breathing of 
the old nurse in the easy chair, and the ticking of the 
clock upon the mantel! Then, silence and the night 
crowd upon your soul drearily. But your thought is 
active. It shapes at your bedside the loved figure of 
your mother, or it calls up the whole company of Dr. 
Bidlow's boys; and weeks of study or of play group 



1 86 Essays Every Child Shotdd Know 

like magic on your quickened vision — then, a twinge of 
pain will call again the dreariness, and your head tosses 
upon the pillow, and your eye searches the gloom vainly 
for pleasant faces; and your fears brood on that drearier 
coming night of Death — far longer, and far more cheer- 
less than this. 

But even here, the memory of some little prayer 
you have been taught, which promises a Morning 
after the Night, comes to your throbbing brain; and 
its murmur on your fevered lips, as you breathe it, 
soothes like a caress of angels, and woos you to smiles 
and sleep. 

As the days pass, you grow stronger; and Frank comes 
in to tell you of the school, and that your old tormentor 
has been expelled: and you grow into a strong friendship 
with Frank, and you think of yourselves as a new Damon 
and Pythias — ^and that you will some day live together 
in a fine house, with plenty of horses, and plenty of chest- 
nut trees. Alas, the boy counts little on those later 
and bitter fates of life, which sever his early friendships 
like wisps of straw ! 

At other times, with your eye upon the sleek, trim 
figure of the Doctor, and upon his huge bunch of watch 
seals, you think you will some day be a Doctor; and that 
with a wife and children, and a respectable gig, and 
gold watch, with seals to match, you would needs be a 
very happy fellow. 

And with such fancies drifting on your thought, you 
count for the hundredth time the figures upon the cur- 
tains of your bed — you trace out the flower wreaths 
upon the paper-hangings of your room— your eyes rest 
idly on the cat playing with the fringe of the curtain — ^you 
see your mother sitting with her needlework beside the 



School Dreams 187 

fire — ^you watch the sunbeams as they drift along the 
carpet, from morning until noon; and from noon till 
night, you watch them playing on the leaves, and drop- 
ping spangles on the lawn; and as you watch — you 
dream. 

— ^Donald G. Mitchell. 



XIII 
CATS 

ONE evening before dinner-time the present writer 
had occasion to go into a dining-room where the 
cloth was already laid, the glasses all in their places on the 
sideboard and table, and the lamp and candles lighted. 
A cat, which was a favourite in the house, finding the 
door ajar, entered softly after me, and began to make a 
little exploration after his manner. I have a fancy for 
watching animals when they think they are not observed, 
so I affected to be entirely absorbed in the occupation 
which detained me there, but took note of the cat's 
proceedings without in any way interrupting them. 
The first thing he did was to jump upon a chair, and 
thence upon the sideboard. There was a good deal of 
glass and plate upon that piece of furniture, but nothing 
as yet which, in the cat's opinion, was worth purloining; 
so he brought all his paws together on the very edge of 
the board, the two forepaws in the middle, the others on 
both sides, and sat balancing himself in that attitude 
for a minute or two, whilst he contemplated the long 
glittering vista of the table. As yet there was not an 
atom of anything eatable upon it, but the cat probably 
thought he might as well ascertain whether this were so 
or not by a closer inspection, for with a single spring he 
cleared the abyss and alighted noiselessly on the table- 
cloth. He walked all over it and left no trace; he passed 
amongst the slender glasses, fragile-stemmed, like air 

i88 



Cats 189 

bubbles cut in half and balanced on spears of ice; yet 
he disturbed nothing, broke nothing, anywhere. When 
his inspection was over he slipped out of sight, having 
been perfectly inaudible from the beginning, so that a 
blind person could only have suspected his visit by that 
mysterious sense which makes the blind aware of the 
presence of another creature. 

This little scene reveals one remarkable characteristic 
of the feline nature, the innate and exquisite refinement 
of its behaviour. It would be infinitely difficult, prob- 
ably even impossible, to communicate a delicacy of 
this kind to any animal by teaching. The cat is a crea- 
ture of most refined and subtle perceptions naturally. 
Why should she tread so carefully? It is not from fear 
of offending her master and incurring punishment, but 
because to do so is in comformity with her own ideal of 
behaviour; exactly as a lady would feel vexed with her- 
self if she broke anything in her own drawing-room 
though no one would blame her maladresse and she would 
never feel the loss. 

The contrast in this respect between cats and other 
animals is very striking. I will not wrong the noble 
canine nature so far as to say that it has no delicacy, 
but its delicacy is not of this kind, not in actual touch, as 
the cat's is. The motions of the cat, being always 
governed by the most refined sense of touch in the animal 
world, are typical in quite a perfect way of what we call 
tact in the human world. And as a man who has tact 
exercises it on all occasions for his own satisfaction, even 
when there is no positive need for it, so a cat will walk 
daintily and observantly everywhere, whether amongst 
the glasses on a dinner-table or the rubbish in a farm- 
yard. 



190 Essays Every Child Should Know 

It is easy to detract from the admirableness of this 
delicate quaUty in the cat by a reference to the necessi- 
ties of her Hfe in a wild state. Any one not much dis- 
posed to enter into imaginative sentimentalities about 
animals might say to us, "What you admire so much 
as a proof of ladylike civilisation in the cat, is rather an 
evidence that she has retained her savage habits. When 
she so carefully avoids the glasses on the dinner-table 
she is not thinking of her behaviour as a dependent on 
civilised man, but acting in obedience to hereditary 
habits of caution in stealthy chase, which is the natural 
accomplishment of her species. She will stir no branch 
of a shrub lest her fated bird escape her, and her feet 
are noiseless that the mouse may not know of her coming." 
This, no doubt, would be a probable account of the origin 
of that fineness of touch and movement which belongs 
to cats, but the fact of that fineness remains. In all the 
domestic animals, and in man himself, there are instincts 
and qualities still more or less distinctly traceable to a 
savage state, and these qualities are often the very basis 
of civiHsation itself. That which in the wild cat is but 
the stealthy cunning of the hunter, is refined in the, tame 
one into a habitual gentleness often very agreeable to 
ladies, who dislike the boisterous demonstrations of the 
dog and his incorrigible carelessness. 

This quality of extreme caution, which makes the cat 
avoid obstacles that a dog would dash through without 
a thought, makes her at the same time somewhat 
reserved and suspicious in all the relations of her life. If 
a cat has been allowed to run half-wild this suspicion 
can never be overcome. There was a numerous popula- 
tion of cats in this half-wild state for some years in the 
garrets of my house. Some of these were exceedingly 



Cats 



191 



fine, handsome animals, and I very much wished to get 
them into the rooms we inhabited, and so domesticate 
them; but all my blandishments were useless. The 
nearest approach to success was in the case of a superb 
white-and-black animal, who, at last, would come to me 
occasionally, and permit me to caress his head, because 
I scratched him behind the ears. Encouraged by this 
measure of confidence, I went so far on one occasion as to 
lift him a few inches from the ground: on which he 
behaved himself very much like a wild cat just trapped 
in the woods, and for some days after it was impossible 
even to get near him. He never came downstairs in 
a regular way, but communicated with the outer world 
by means of roofs and trees, like the other untamable 
creatures in the garrets. On returning home after an 
absence I sought him vainly, and have never encountered 
him since. 

This individual lived on the confines of civilisation, 
and it is possible that his tendency to friendliness might 
have been developed into a feeling more completely 
trustful by greater delicacy and care. I happened to 
mention him to an hotel-keeper who was unusually fond 
of animals, and unusually successful in winning their 
affections. He told me that his own cats were remark- 
able for their uncommon tameness, being very much 
petted and caressed, and constantly in the habit of seeing 
numbers of people who came to the hotel, and he advised 
me to try a kitten of his breed. This kitten, from hered- 
itary civilisation, behaved with the utmost confidence 
from the beginning, and, with the exception of occasional 
absences for his own purposes, has lived with me regu- 
larly enough. In winter he generally sleeps upon my 
dog, who submits in patience; and I have often found 



192 Essays Every Child Should Know 

him on horseback in the stable, not from any taste for 
equestrianism, but simply because a horsecloth is a 
perpetual warmer when there is a living horse beneath it. 
All who have written upon cats are unanimous in the 
opinion that their caressing ways bear reference simply 
to themselves. My cat loves the dog and horse exactly 
with the tender sentiment we have for foot-warmers and 
railway rugs during a journey in the depth of winter, nor 
have I ever been able to detect any worthier feeling to- 
ward his master. Ladies are often fond of cats, and 
pleasantly encourage the illusion that they are affection- 
ate; it is said too that very intellectual men have often 
a liking for the same animal. In both these cases the 
attachment seems to be due more to certain other qualities 
of the cat than to any strength of sentiment on his part. 
Of all animals that we can have in a room with us, the 
cat is the least disturbing. Dogs bring so much dirt 
into houses that many ladies have a positive horror of 
them; squirrels leap about in a manner highly dangerous 
to the ornaments of a drawing-room; whilst monkeys 
are so incorrigibly mischievous that it is impossible to 
tolerate them, notwithstanding the nearness of the rela- 
tionship. But you may have a cat in the room with 
you without anxiety about anything except eatables. 
He will rob a dish if he can get at it, but he will not, 
except by the rarest of accidents, displace a sheet of paper 
or upset an inkstand. The presence of a cat is positively 
soothing to a student, as the presence of a quiet nurse 
is soothing to the irritability of an invalid. It is agreeable 
to feel that you are not absolutely alone, and it seems to 
yGu, as you work, as if the cat took care that all her move- 
ments should be noiseless, purely out of consideration 
for your comfort. Then, if you have time to caress her, 



Cats 193 

you know that there will be purring responses, and why 
inquire too closely into the sincerity of her gratitude? 
There have been instances of people who surrounded 
themselves with cats; old maids have this fancy some- 
times, which is intelligible, because old maids delight 
in having objects on which to lavish their inexhaustible 
kindness, and their love of neatness and comfort is in 
harmony with the neat habits of these comfort-appreciat- 
ing creatures. A dog on velvet is evidently out of place, 
he would be as happy on clean straw, but a cat on velvet 
does not awaken any sense of the incongruous. It is 
more difficult to understand how men of business ever 
take to cats. A well-known French politician, who 
certainly betrayed nothing feminine in his speeches, was 
so fond of cats that it was impossible to dine peaceably 
at his house on account of four licensed feline marauders 
which promenaded upon the dinner-table, helping them- 
selves to everything, and jumping about the shoulders 
of the guests. It may be observed that in Paris cats 
frequently appear upon the table in another shape. I 
once stayed in a house not very far from the great tri- 
umphal arch; and from my window, at certain hours 
of the day, might be observed a purveyor of dead cats 
who supplied a small cheap restaurant in a back street. 
I never went to eat at the restaurant, but ascertained 
that it had a certain reputation for a dish supposed to 
be made of rabbits. During the great siege, many 
Parisians who may frequently have eaten cat without 
knowing it (as you also may perchance have done, 
respected reader) came to eat cat with clear knowledge 
of the true nature of the feast, and they all seem to agree 
that it was very good. Our prejudices about the flesh 
we use for food are often inconsistent, the most reasonable 



1 94 Essays Every Child Should Know 

one seems to be a preference for vegetable feeders, yet 
we eat lobsters and pike. The truth is that nobody 
who eats even duck can consistently have a horror of 
cat's flesh on the ground of the animal's habits. And 
although the cat is a carnivorous animal, it has a passion- 
ate fondness for certain vegetable substances, delighting 
in the odour of valerian, and in the taste of aspara- 
gus, the former to ecstasy, the latter to downright 
gluttony. 

Since artists cannot conveniently have lions and tigers 
in their studios, they sometimes like to have cats merely 
that they may watch the ineffable grace of their motions. 
Stealthy and treacherous as they are, they have yet a 
quite peculiar finish of style in action, far surpassing, in 
certain qualities of manner, the most perfectly-trained 
action of horses, or even the grace of the roe-deer or the 
gazelle. All other animals are stiff in comparison with 
the felines, all other animals have distinctly bodies sup- 
ported by legs, reminding one of the primitive toy- 
maker's conception of a quadruped, a cylinder on four 
sticks, with a neck and head at one end and a tail at the 
other. But the cat no more recalls this rude anatomy 
than does a serpent. From the tips of his whiskers to 
the extremities of tail and claws he is so much living 
india-rubber. One never thinks of muscles and bones 
whilst looking at him (has he any muscles and bones?), 
but only of the reserved electric life that lies waiting 
under the softness of the fur. What bursts of energy 
the creature is capable of! I once shut up a half -wild 
cat in a room and he flew about like a frightened bird, 
or like leaves caught in a whirlwind. He dashed against 
the windowpanes like a sudden hail, ran up the walls like 
arrested water, and flung himself everywhere with such 



Cats 195 

rapidity that he filled as much space, and filled it almost 
as dangerously, as twenty flashing swords. And yet 
this incredibl}^ wild energy is in the creature's quiet habits 
subdued with an exquisite moderation. The cat always 
uses precisely the necessary force, other animals roughly 
employ what strength they happen to possess without 
reference to the small occasion. One day I watched a 
young cat playing with a daffodil. She sat on her hind- 
legs and patted the flower with her paws, first with one 
paw and then with the other, making the light yellow 
bell sway from side to side, yet not injuring a petal or a 
stamen. She took a delight, evidently, in the very deli- 
cacy of the exercise, whereas a dog or a horse has no 
enjoyment of delicacy in his own movements, but acts 
strongly when he is strong, without calculating whether 
the force used may not be in great part superfluous. 
This proportioning of the force to the need is well known 
to be one of the evidences of refined culture, both in 
manners and in the fine arts. If animals could speak 
as fabulists have feigned, the dog would be a blunt, 
blundering outspoken, honest fellow, but the cat would 
have the rare talent of never saying a word too much. 
A hint of the same character is conveyed by the sheathing 
of the claws, and also by the contractability of the pupil 
of the eye. The hostile claws are invisible, and are not 
shown when they are not wanted, yet are ever sharp and 
ready. The eye has a narrow pupil in broad day- 
light, receiving no more sunshine than is agreeable, 
but it will gradually expand as twilight falls, and 
clear vision needs a larger and larger surface. Some 
of these cat-qualities are very desirable in criticism. 
The claws of a critic ought to be very sharp, but 
not perpetually prominent, and his eye ought to see 



196 Essays Every Child Should Know 

far into rather obscure subjects without being dazzled 
by plain daylight. 

It is odd that, notwithstanding the extreme beauty 
of cats, their elegance of motion, the variety and intensity 
of their colour, they should be so little painted by con- 
siderable artists. Almost all the pictures of cats which 
I remember were done by inferior men, often by artists 
of a very low grade indeed. The reason for this is prob- 
ably, that although the cat is a refined and very voluptuous 
animal, it is so wanting in the nobler qualities as to fail 
in winning the serious sympathies of noble and generous- 
hearted men. M. Manet once very appropriately in- 
troduced a black cat on the bed of a Parisian lorette, and 
this cat became quite famous for a week or two in all the 
Parisian newspapers, being also cleverly copied by 
the caricaturists. No other painted cat ever attracted 
so much attention, indeed "Le chat de M. Manet" 
amused Paris as Athens amused itself with the dog of 
Alcibiades. 

M. Manet's cat had an awful look, and depths of 
meaning were discoverable in its eyes of yellow flame set 
in the blackness of the night. There has always been a 
feeling that a black cat was not altogether "canny." 
Many of us, if we were quite sincere, would confess to a 
superstition about black cats. They seem to know too 
much, and is it not written that their ancesters were the 
companions and accomplices of witches in the times of 
old? Who can tell what baleful secrets may not have 
been transmitted through their generations? There 
can be no doubt that cats know a great deal more 
than they choose to tell us, though occasionally they 
may let a secret out in some unguarded moment. 
Shelley the poet, who had an intense sense of the 



Cats 197 

supernatural, narrates the following history, as he heard it 
from Mr. G. Lewis : 

A gentleman on a visit to a friend who lived on the skirts of an 
extensive forest on the east of Germany lost his way. He wandered 
for some hours among the trees, when he saw a light at a distance. 
On approaching it, he was surprised to observe that it proceeded 
from the interior of a ruined monastery. Before he knocked, he 
thought it prudent to look through the window. He saw a multi- 
tude of cats assembled round a small grave, four of whom were 
letting down a cofl&n with a crown upon it. The gentleman, 
startled at this unusual sight, and imagining that he had arrived 
among the retreats of j6ends or witches, mounted his horse and rode 
away with the utmost precipitation. He arrived at his friend's 
house at a late hour, who had sat up for him. On his arrival, his 
friend questioned as to the cause of the traces of trouble visible 
on his face. He began to recount his adventure, after much 
difficulty, knowing that it was scarcely possible that his friend 
should give faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned 
the coffin with a crown upon it, than his friend's cat, who seemed 
to have been lying asleep before the fire, leaped up, saying, "Then 
I am the King of the Cats!" and scrambled up the chimney and 
was seen no more. 

Now, is not that a remarkable story, proving, at the 
same time, the attention cats pay to human conversation 
even when they outwardly seem perfectly indifferent to 
it, and the monarchical character of their political 
organisation, which without this incident might have 
remained for ever unknown to us? This happened, 
we are told, in eastern Germany; but in our own island, 
less than a hundred years ago, there remained at least 
one cat fit to be the ministrant of a sorceress. When 
Sir Walter Scott visited the Black Dwarf, " Bowed Davie 
Ritchie," the Dwarf said, "Man, /zae ye ony poo^r ?^* 
meaning power of a supernatural kind, and he added 
solemnly, pointing to a large black cat whose fiery eyes 



198 Essays Every Child Should Know 

shone in a dark corner of the cottage, "He has poo^rl" 
In Scott's place any imaginative person would have more 
than half believed Davie, as indeed did his illustrious 
visitor. The ancient Egyptians, who knew as much 
about magic as the wisest of the moderns, certainly 
believed that the cat had poo^r, or they would not have 
mummified him with such painstaking conscientiousness. 
It may easily be imagined that in times when science 
did not exist, a creature whose fur emitted lightnings 
when anybody rubbed it in the dark, must have inspired 
great awe, and there is really an air of mystery about cats 
which considerably exercises the imagination. This 
impression would be intensified in the case of people 
born with a physical antipathy to cats, and there are 
such persons. A Captain Logan, of Knockshinnock 
in Ayrshire, is mentioned in one of the early numbers 
of Chambers' Journal as having this antipathy in the 
strongest form. He simply could not endure the sight 
of cat or kitten, and though a tall, strong man, would 
do anything to escape from the objects of his instinctive 
and uncontrollable horror, climbing upon chairs if a 
cat entered the room, and not daring to come down till 
the creature was removed from his presence. These 
mysterious repugnances are outside the domain of 
reason. Many people, not without courage, are seized 
with involuntary shudderings when they see a snake or a 
toad; others could not bring themselves to touch a rat, 
though the rat is one of the cleanliest of animals — not 
certainly, as to his food, but his person. It may be 
presumed that one Mrs. Griggs, who lived, I believe, in 
Edinburgh, did not share Captain Logan^s antipathy, 
for she kept in her house no less than eighty-six living cats, 
and had, besides, twenty-eight dead ones in glass cases, 



Cats 199 

immortalised by the art of the taxidermist. If it is true, 
and it certainly is so in a great measure, that those who 
love most know most, then Mrs. Griggs would have been 
a much more competent person to write on cats than the 
colder-minded author of these chapters. It is wonderful 
to think how much that good lady must have known of 
the lovahleness of cats, of those recondite qualities which 
may endear them to the human heart! 

What a difference in knowledge and feeling concerning 
cats between Mrs, Griggs and a gamekeeper! The 
gamekeeper knows a good deal about them too, but it is 
not exactly affection which has given keenness to his 
observation. He does not see a ''dear sweet pet" in 
every cat that crosses his woodland paths, but the most 
destructive of poachers, the worst of "vermin." And 
there can be no doubt that from his point of view the 
gamekeeper is quite right, even as good Mrs. Griggs 
may have been from hers. If cats killed game from 
hunger only, there would be a limit to their depredations, 
but unfortunately they have the instinct of sport, which 
sportsmen consider a very admirable quality in them- 
selves, but regard with the strongest disapprobation in 
other animals. Mr. Frank Buckland says, that when 
once a cat has acquired the passion for hunting it becomes 
so strong that it is impossible to break him of it. He 
knew a cat which had been condemned to death, but the 
owner begged its life on condition that it should be shut 
up every night and well fed. The very first night of its 
incarceration it escaped up the chimney, and was found 
the next morning, black with soot, in one of the game- 
keeper's traps. The keeper easily determines what 
kind of animal has been committing depredations in 
his absence. " Every animal has his own way of killing 



200 Essays Every Child Should Know 

and eating his prey. The cat always turns the skin 
inside out, leaving the same reversed like a glove. The 
weasel and stoat will eat the brain and nibble about the 
head, and suck the blood. The fox will always leave 
the legs and hinder parts of a hare or a rabbit; the dog 
tears his prey to pieces, and eats it 'anyhow — all over 
the place'; the crows and magpies always peck at the 
eyes before they touch any part of the body." 

"Again," continues Mr. Frank Buckland, "let the 
believer in the innocence of Mrs. Puss listen to the crow 
of the startled pheasant; he will hear him 'tree,' as the 
keeper calls it, and from his safe perch up in a branch 
again crow as if to summon his protector to his aid. No 
second summons does the keeper want; he at once runs 
to the spot, and there, stealing with erect ears, glaring 
eyes, and limbs collected together, and at a high state of 
tension, ready for the fatal spring, he sees — what? — 
the cat, of course, caught in the very attitude of 
premeditated poaching." 

This love of sport might perhaps be turned to account 
if cats were trained as larger felines are trained for the 
princes of India. A fisherman of Portsmouth, called 
"Robinson Crusoe," made famous by Mr. Buckland, 
had a cat called " Puddles," which overcame the horror 
of water characteristic of his race, and employed his 
piscatorial talents in the service of his master: 

He was the wonderfullest water-cat as ever came out of Ports- 
mouth Harbour was Puddles, and he used to go out a-fishing with 
me every night. On cold nights he would sit in my lap while I 
was a-fishing and poke his head out every now and then, or else 
I would wrap him up in a sail, and make him lay quiet. He'd 
lay down on me when I was asleep, and if anybody come he'd 
swear a good one, and have the face off on 'em if they went to 



Cats 20 1 

touch mc; and he'd never touch a fish, not even a little teeny pout, 
if you did not give it him. I was obligated to take him out a- 
fishing, for else he would stand and youl and marr till I went back 
and catched him by the pol and shied him into the boat, and then 
he was quite happy. When it was fine he used to stick up at the 
bows of the boat and sit a-watching the dogs {i. e., dog-fish) . The 
dogs used to come alongside by thousands at a time, and when 
they were thick all about he would dive in and fetch them out, 
jammed in his mouth as fast as may be, just as if they was a parcel 
of rats, and he did not tremble with the cold half as much as a 
Newfoundland dog; he was used to it. He looked terrible wild 
about the head when he came up out of the water with the dog- 
fish. I lamt him the water myself. One day, when he was a 
kitten, I took him down to the sea to wash and brush the fleas out 
of him, and in a week he could swim after a feather or a cork. 

Of the cat in a state of nature few of us have seen 
very much. The wild cat has become rare in the British 
islands, but the specimens shot occasionally by game- 
keepers are very superior in size and strength to the fami- 
liar occupant of the hearth-rug. I remember that 
when I lived at Loch Awe, my next neighbour, a keeper 
on the Cladich estate, shot one that quite astonished 
me — a formidable beast indeed, to which the largest 
domestic cat was as an ordinary human being to Chang 
the giant — indeed this comparison is insufficient. 
Wild cats are not usually dangerous to man, for they 
prudently avoid him, but if such a creature as that killed 
on Lochaweside were to show fight, an unarmed man 
would find the situation very perilous. I would much 
rather have to fight a wolf. There is a tradition at the 
village of Barnborough, in Yorkshire, that a man and a 
wild cat fought together in a wood near there, and that 
the combat went on till they got to the church-porch, 
when both died from their wounds. It is the marvellous 
agility of the cat which makes him such a terrible enemy; 



202 Essays Every Child Should Know 

to say that he " flies " at you is scarcely a figure of speech. 
However, the wild cat, when he knows that he is ob- 
served, generally seeks refuge, as King Charles did at 
Boscobel, in the leafy shelter of some shadowy tree, 
and there the deadly leaden hail too surely follows him, 
and brings him to earth again. 

Cats have the advantage of being very highly con- 
nected, since the king of beasts is their blood-relation, 
and it is certain that a good deal of the interest we take 
in them is due to this august relationship. What the 
merlin or the sparrow-hawk is to the golden eagle, the 
cat is to the great felines of the tropics. The difference 
between a domestic cat and a tiger is scarcely wider than 
that which separates a miniature pet dog from a blood- 
hound. It is becoming to the dignity of an African 
prince, like Theodore of Abyssinia, to have lions for his 
household pets. The true grandeur and majesty of a 
brave man are rarely seen in such visible supremacy as 
when he sits surrounded by these terrible creatures, he 
in his fearlessness, they in their awe; he in his defence- 
less weakness, they with that mighty strength which 
they dare not use against him. One of my friends, 
distinguished alike in literature and science, but not at 
all the sort of person, apparently, to command respect 
from brutes who cannot estimate intellectual greatness, 
had one day an interesting conversation with a lion- 
tamer, which ended in a still more interesting experiment. 
The lion-tamer affirmed that there was no secret in his 
profession, that real courage alone was necessary, and 
that any one who had the genuine gift of courage could 
safely enter the cage along with him. "For example, 
you yourself, sir," added the lion-tamer, "if you have 
the sort of courage I mean, may go into the cage with 



Cats 203 

me whenever you like." On this my friend, who has a 
fine intellectual coolness and unbounded scientific 
curiosity, willingly accepted the offer, and paid a visit 
to their majesties the lions in the privacy of their own 
apartment. They received him with the politeness due 
to a brave man, and after an agreeable interview of 
several minutes he backed out of the royal presence with 
the gratified feelings of a gentleman who has just been 
presented at court. 

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton. 



XIV 
ON VAGABONDS 

CALL it oddity, eccentricity, humour, or what you 
please, it is evident that the special flavour of 
mind or manner which, independently of fortune, station, 
or profession, sets a man apart and makes him dis- 
tinguishable from his fellows, and which gives the charm 
of picturesqueness to society, is fast disappearing from 
amongst us. A man may count the odd people of his 
acquaintance on his fingers; and it is observable that 
these odd people are generally well stricken in years. 
They belong more to the past generation than to the 
present. Our young men are terribly alike. For these 
many years back, the young gentlemen I have had the 
fortune to encounter are clever, knowing, selfish, dis- 
agreeable; the young ladies are of one pattern, like 
minted sovereigns of the same reign — excellent gold, 
I have no doubt, but each bearing the same awfully 
proper image and superscription. There are no blanks 
in the matrimonial lottery nowadays, but the prizes are 
all of a value, and there is but one kind of article given 
for the ticket. Courtship is an absurdity and a sheer 
waste of time. If a man could but close his eyes in a 
ballroom, dash into a bevy of muslin beauties, carry off 
the fair one that accident gives to his arms, his raid 
would be as reasonable and as likely to produce happiness 
as the more ordinary methods of procuring a spouse. 
If a man has to choose one guinea out of a bag containing 
204 



On Vagabonds 205 

one hundred and fifty, what can he do? What won- 
derful wisdom can he display in his choice? There is 
no appreciable difference of value in the golden pieces. 
The latest coined are a little fresher, that's all. An 
act of uniformity, with heavy penalties for recusants, 
seems to have been passed upon the English race. That 
we can quite well account for this state of things, does 
not make the matter better, does not make it the less our 
duty to fight against it. We are apt to be told that men 
are too busy and women too accomplished for humour 
of speech or originality of character or manner. In the 
truth of this lies the pity of it. If, with the exceptions 
of hedges that divide fields, and streams that run as 
marches between farms, every inch of soil were drained, 
ploughed, manured, and under that improved cultiva- 
tion rushing up into astonishing wheaten and oaten crops, 
enriching tenant and proprietor, the aspect of the country 
would be decidedly uninteresting, and would present 
scant attraction to the man riding or walking through it. 
In such a world the tourists would be few. Personally, 
I should detest a world all red and ruled with the plough- 
share in spring, all covered with harvest in autumn. 
I wish a little variety. I desiderate moors and barren 
places: the copse where you can flush the woodcock; 
the warren where, when you approach, you can see the 
twinkle of innumerable rabbit tails; and, to tell the truth, 
would not feel sorry although Reynard himself had a 
hole beneath the wooded bank, even if the demands of his 
rising family cost Farmer Yellowleas a fat capon or two 
in the season. The fresh, rough, heathery parts of human 
nature, where the air is freshest, and where the linnets 
sing, is getting encroached upon by cultivated fields. 
Every one is making himself and herself useful. Every 



2o6 Essays Every Child Should Know 

one is producing something. Everybody is clever. 
Everybody is a philanthropist. I don't like it. I love 
a little eccentricity. I respect honest prejudices. I 
admire foolish enthusiasm in a young head better than a 
wise scepticism. It is high time, it seems to me, that a 
moral game-law were passed for the preservation of the 
wild and vagrant feelings of human nature. 

I have advertised myself to speak of vagabonds^ and 
I must explain what I mean by the term. We all know 
what was the doom of the first child born of man, 
and it is needless for me to say that I do not wish the 
spirit of Cain more widely diffused amongst my fellow- 
creatures. By vagabonds, I do not mean a tramp or 
a gypsy, or a thimble-rigger, or a brawler who is brought 
up with a black eye before a magistrate in the morning. 
The vagabond as I have him in my mind's eye, and 
whom I dearly love, comes out of quite a different mould. 
The man I speak of, seldom, it is true, attains to the 
dignity of a churchwarden; he is never found sitting at 
a reformed town council board; he has a horror of public 
platforms; he never by any chance heads a subscription 
list with a donation of fifty pounds. On the other hand, 
he is very far from being a " ne'er-do-weel," as the Scotch 
phrase it, or an imprudent person. He does not play 
at "Aunt Sally" on a public race-course; he does not 
wrench knockers from the doors of slumbering citizens; 
he has never seen the interior of a police-cell. It is 
quite true, he has a peculiar way of looking at many 
things. If, for instance, he is brought up with cousin 
Milly, and loves her dearly, and the childish affection 
grows up and strengthens in the woman's heart, and 
there is a fair chance for them fighting the world side by 
side, he marries her without too curiously considering 



On Vagabonds 207 

whether his income will permit him to give dinner-parties, 
and otherwise fashionably see his friends. Very im- 
prudent, no doubt. But you cannot convince my 
vagabond. With the strangest logical twist, which seems 
natural to him, he conceives that he marries for his own 
sake, and not for the sake of his acquaintances, and that 
the possession of a loving heart and a conscience void 
of reproach is worth, at any time, an odd sovereign in 
his pocket. The vagabond is not a favourite with the 
respectable classes. He is particularly feared by mammas 
who have daughters to dispose of, — not that he is a 
bad son, or likely to prove a bad husband or a treacherous 
friend; but somehow gold does not stick to his fingers 
as it does to the fingers of some men. He is regardless 
of appearances. He chooses his friends neither for their 
fine houses nor their rare wines, but for their humours, 
their goodness of heart, their capacities of making a 
joke and of seeing one, and for their abilities, unknown 
often as the woodland violet, but not the less sweet for 
obscurity. As a consequence, his acquaintance is 
miscellaneous, and he is often seen at other places than 
rich men's feasts. I do believe he is a gainer by reason 
of his vagrant ways. He comes in contact with the 
queer corners and the out-of-the-way places of human 
life. He knows more of our common nature, just as 
the man who walks through a country, and who strikes 
off the main road now and then to visit a ruin, or a legend- 
ary cairn of stones, who drops into village inns, and talks 
with the people he meets on the road, becomes better 
acquainted with it than the man who rolls haughtily 
along the turnpike in a carriage and four. We lose a 
great deal by foolish hauteur. No man is worth much 
who has not a touch of the vagabond in him. Could I 



2o8 Essays Every Child Should Know 

have visited London thirty years ago, I would rather have 
spent an hour with Charles Lamb than with any other 
of its residents. He was a fine specimen of the vagabond, 
as I conceive him. His mind was as full of queer nooks 
and tortuous passages as any mansion house of Eliza- 
beth's day or earlier, where the rooms are cosey, albeit 
a little low in the roof; where dusty stained lights are 
falling on old oaken panellings; where every bit of 
furniture has a reverent flavour of ancientness; where 
portraits of noble men and women, all dead long ago, 
are hanging on the walls; and where a black letter 
Chaucer with silver clasps is lying open on a seat in the 
window. There was nothing modern about him. The 
garden of his mind did not flaunt in gay parterres; it 
resembled those that Cowley and Evelyn delighted in, 
with clipped trees, and shaven lawns, and stone satyrs, 
and dark, shadowing yews, and a sun-dial, with a Latin 
motto sculptured on it, standing at the farther end. 
Lamb was the slave of quip and whimsey; he stuttered 
out puns to the detriment of all serious and improving 
conversation, and twice or so in the year he was overtaker 
in liquor. Well, in spite of these things, perhaps on 
account of these things, I love his memory. For love 
and charity ripened in that nature as peaches ripen 
on the wall that fronts the sun. Although he did not 
blow his trumpet in the corners of the streets, he was 
tried as few men are, and fell not. He jested, that he 
might not weep. He wore a martyr's heart beneath 
his suit of motley. And only years after his death, 
when to admiration or censure he was alike insensible, 
did the world know his story and that of his sister Mary. 
Ah, me! what a world this was to live in two or three 
centuries ago, when it was getting itself discovered— 



On Vagabonds 209 

when the sunset gave up America, when a steel hand had 
the spoiling of Mexico and Peru! Then were the 
'' Arabian Nights" commonplace, enchantments a matter 
of course, and romance the most ordinary thing in the 
world. Then man was courting Nature; now he has 
married her. Every mystery is dissipated. The planet is 
familiar as the trodden pathway running between towns. 
We no longer gaze wistfully to the west, dreaming of 
the Fortunate Isles. We seek our wonders now on the 
ebbed sea-shore; we discover our new worlds with the 
microscope. Yet, for all that time has brought and 
taken away, I am glad to know that the vagabond sleeps 
in our blood, and awakes now and then. Overlay 
human nature as you please, here and there some bit 
of rock, or mound of aboriginal soil, will crop out with 
the wild-flowers growing upon it, sweetening the air. 
WTien the boy throws his Delectus or his Euclid aside, 
and takes passionately to the reading of "Robinson 
Crusoe" or Bruce's "African Travels," do not shake 
your head despondingly over him and prophesy evil 
issues. Let the wild hawk try its wings. It will be 
hooded, and will sit quietly enough on the falconer's 
perch ere long. Let the wild horse career over its bound- 
less pampas; the jerk of the lasso will bring it down 
soon enough. Soon enough will the snaffle in the mouth 
and the spur of the tamer subdue the high spirit to the 
bridle, or the carriage-trace. Perhaps not; and, if so, 
the better for all parties. Once more there will be a 
new man and new deeds in the world. For Genius is 
a vagabond. Art is a vagabond, Enterprise is a vagabond. 
Vagabonds have moulded the world into its present shape; 
they have made the houses in which we dwell, the roads 
on which we ride and drive, the very laws that govern us. 



2IO Essays Every Child Should Know 

Respectable people swarm in the track of the vagabond 
as rooks in the track of the ploughshare. Respectable 
people do little in the world except storing wine-cellars 
and amassing fortunes for the benefit of spendthrift 
heirs. Respectable well-to-do Grecians shook their 
heads over Leonidas and his three hundred when they 
went down to Thermopylae. Respectable Spanish 
churchmen with shaven crowns scouted the dream of 
Columbus. Respectable German folks attempted to 
dissuade Luther from appearing before Charles and 
the princes and electors of the Empire, and were scan- 
dalised when he declared that "Were there as many 
devils in Worms as there were tiles on the housetops, still 
would he on." Nature makes us vagabonds, the world 
makes us respectable. 

In the fine sense in which I take the word, the English 
are the greatest vagabonds on the earth, and it is the 
healthiest trait in their national character. The first 
fine day in spring awakes the gypsy in the blood of the 
English workman, and incontinently he "babbles of 
green fields." On the English gentleman lapped in 
the most luxurious civilisation, and with the thousand 
powers and resources of wealth at his command, descends 
oftentimes a fierce unrest, a Bedouin-like horror of cities 
and the cry of the money-changer, and in a month the 
fiery dust rises in the track of his desert steed, or in the 
six months' polar midnight he hears the big wave clashing 
on the icy shore. The close presence of the sea feeds 
the Englishman's restlessness. She takes possession 
of his heart like some fair capricious mistress. Before 
the boy awakes to the beauty of cousin Mary, he is 
crazed by the fascinations of ocean. With her voices 
of ebb and flow she weaves her siren song round the 



On Vagabonds 211 

Englishman's coasts day and night. Nothing that dwells 
on land can keep from her embrace the boy who has gazed 
upon her dangerous beauty, and who has heard her 
singing songs of foreign shores at the foot of the summer 
crag. It is well that in the modern gentleman the fierce 
heart of the Berserker lives yet. The English are 
eminently a nation of vagabonds. The sun paints 
English faces with all the colours of his cHmes. The 
Englishman is ubiquitous. He shakes with fever and 
ague in the swampy valley of the Mississippi; he is 
drowned in the sand pillars as they waltz across the 
desert on the purple breath of the simoom; he stands 
on the icy scalp of Mont Blanc; his fly falls in the sullen 
Norwegian fiords; he invades the solitude of the Cape 
lion; he rides on his donkey through the uncausewayed 
Cairo streets. That wealthy people, under a despotism, 
should be travellers seems a natural thing enough. It 
is a way of escape from the rigours of their condition. 
But that England — where activity rages so keenly and 
engrosses every class; where the prizes of Parliament, 
literature, commerce, the bar, the church, are hungered 
and thirsted after; where the stress and intensity of 
life ages a man before his time; where so many of the 
noblest break down in harness hardly half-way to the 
goal — should, year after year, send off swarms of men 
to roam the world, and to seek out danger for the mere 
thrill and enjoyment of it, is significant of the indomit- 
able pluck and spirit of the race. There is scant danger 
that the rust of sloth will eat into the virtue of English 
steel. The English do the hard work and the travel- 
ling of the world. The least revolutionary nation of 
Europe, the one with the greatest temptations to stay 
at home, with the greatest faculty for work, with perhaps 



212 Essays Every Child Should Know 

the sincerest regard for wealth, is also the most nomadic. 
How is this? It is because they are a nation of vaga- 
bonds; they have the "hungry heart" that one of their 
poets speaks about. 

There is an amiability about the genuine vagabond 
which takes captive the heart. We do not love a man 
for his respectability, his prudence and foresight in 
business, his capacity of living within his income, or his 
balance at his banker's. We all admit that prudence 
is an admirable virtue, and occasionally lament, about 
Christmas, when bills fall in, that we do not inherit it 
in a greater degree. But we speak about it in quite 
a cool way. It does not touch us with enthusiasm. If 
a calculating-machine had a hand to wring, it would 
find few to wring it warmly. The things that really 
move liking in human beings are the gnarled nodosities 
of character, vagrant humours, freaks of generosity, 
some little unextinguishable spark of the aboriginal 
savage, some little sweet savour of the old Adam. It is 
quite wonderful how far simple generosity and kindliness 
of heart go' in securing affection; and, when these exist, 
what a host of apologists spring up for faults and vices 
even. A country squire goes recklessly to the dogs; 
yet if he has a kind word for his tenant when he meets 
him, a frank greeting for the rustic beauty when she 
drops a courtesy to him on the highway, he lives for a 
whole generation in an odour of sanctity. If he had 
been a disdainful hook-nosed prime minister who had 
carried his country triumphantly through some frightful 
crisis of war, these people would, perhaps, never have 
been aware of the fact; and most certainly never would 
have tendered him a word of thanks, even if they had. 
When that important question, " Which is the greatest 



On Vagabonds 213 



toe to the public weal-the miser or the spendthrift? 
is discussed at the artisans' debating club the spend- 
thrift has all the eloquence on his side-the miser all 
the votes. The miser's advocate is nowhere, and he 
pleads the cause of his client with only half his hearty 
In the theatre, Charles Surface is applauded and Joseph 
Surface is hissed. The novel-reader's affection goes 
out to Tom Jones, his hatred to BUM. Joseph Surface 
and Blifil are scoundrels, it is true; but deduct the scoun- 
dreUsm,let Joseph be but a stale proverb-monger and 
Blifil a conceited prig, and the issue remains the same. 
Good humour and generosity carry the day ^th the pop- 
ular heart all the world over. Tom Jones and Char 
Surface are not vagabonds to my taste. They were 
shabby fellows both, and were treated a great dea too 
well But there are other vagabonds whom I love, 
and whom I do well to love. With what auction do 
I follow little Ishmael and his broken-hearted mother 
out into the great and terrible wilderness and see them 
faint beneath the ardours of the sunlight! And we fee 
it to be strict poetic justice and compensation that he 
lad so driven forth from human tents should become the 
father of wild Arabian men, to whom the air of cities 
is poison, who work without any tool, and on whose 
limbs no ;onqueror has ever yet been able to "-t shackle 
or chain. Then there are Abraham's grandchildren, 
Jacob and Esau-the former, I confess, no favourite 
of mine. His, up at least to his closmg years, when 
parental affection and strong sorrow softened him, was a 
character not amiable. He lacked generosity and had 
too keen an eye on his own advancement. He did not 
inherit the noble strain of his ancestors. He was a 
prosperous man; yet in spite of his increase m flocks 



214 Essays Every Child Should Know 

and herds — in spite of his vision of the ladder, with the 
angels ascending and descending upon it — in spite of 
the success of his beloved son — in spite of the weeping 
and lamentations of the Egyptians at his death — in spite 
of his splendid funeral, winding from the city by the 
pyramid and the sphinx — in spite of all these things, 
I would rather have been the hunter Esau, with birth- 
right filched away, bankrupt in the promise, rich only in 
fleet foot and keen spear, for he carried into the wilds 
with him an essentially noble nature — no brother with 
his mess of pottage could mulct him of that. And he 
had a fine revenge; for when Jacob, on his journey, 
heard that his brother was near with four hundred men, 
and made division of his flocks and herds, his man- 
servants and maid-servants, impetuous as a swollen hill- 
torrent, the fierce son of the desert, baked red with 
Syrian light, leaped down upon him, and fell on his 
neck and wept. And Esau said, "What meanest 
thou by all this drove which I met?" and Jacob 
said, "These are to find grace in the sight of my 
Lord;" then Esau said, "I have enough, my brother; 
keep that thou hast unto thyself." O mighty 
prince, didst thou remember thy mother's guile, the 
skins upon thy hands and neck, and the lie put upon 
the patriarch, as, blind with years, he sat up in his 
bed snuffing the savoury meat? An ugly memory, I 
should fancy! 

Commend me to Shakespeare's vagabonds, the most 
delightful in the world! His sweetblooded and liberal 
nature blossomed into all fine generosities as naturally 
as an apple-bough into pink blossoms and odours. Listen 
to Gonsalvo talking to the shipwrecked Milan nobles 
camped for the night in Prospero's isle, full of sweet voices 



On Vagabonds 215 

with Ariel shooting through the enchanted air Hke a 
faUing star: 

Had I the plantation of this isle, my lord, 

I' the commonwealth I would by contraries 

Execute all things; for no kind of traffic 

Would I admit; no name of magistrate; 

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, 

And use of service none; contract, succession. 

Bourne, bound of land, tilth, title, vineyard none; 

No use of metal coin, or wine, or oil; 

No occupation — all men idle — all! 

And women too, but innocent and pure; 

No sovereignty; 

All things in common nature should produce, 

Without sweat or endurance; treason, felony, 

Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine 

Would I not have; but nature would bring forth 

Of its own kind all foison, all abundance, 

To feed my innocent people. 

I w^ould with such perfection govern, sir, 

To excel the golden age. 

What think you of a world after that pattern? "As 
You Like It" is a vagabond play, and, verily, if there 
waved in any wind that blows a forest peopled like 
Arden's, with an exiled king drawing the sweetest, 
humanest lessons from misfortune; a melancholy Jacques, 
stretched by the river bank, moralising on the bleeding 
deer; a fair RosaUnd, chanting her saucy cuckoo-song; 
fools like Touchstone— not like those of our acquaintance, 
my friends; and the whole place, from centre to cir- 
cumference, filled with mighty oak bolls, all carven 
with lovers' names— if such a forest waved in wind, I 
say, I would, be my worldly prospects what they might, 
pack up at once, and cast in my lot with that vagabond 
company. For there I should find more gallant courtesies, 



21 6 Essays Every Child Should Know 

finer sentiments, completer innocence and happiness, 
more wit and wisdom, than I am Hke to do here even 
though I search for them from shepherd's cot to king's 
palace. Just to think how those people lived! Care- 
lessly as the blossoming trees, happily as the singing 
birds, time measured only by the patter of the acorn 
on the fruitful soil! A world without debtor or creditor, 
passing rich, yet with never a doit in its purse, with no 
sordid care, no regard for appearances; nothing to 
occupy the young but love-making, nothing to occupy 
the old but perusing the "sermons in stones" and the 
musical wisdom which dwells in "running brooks!" 
But Arden forest draws its sustenance from a poet's 
brain: the light that sleeps on its leafy pillows is "the 
light that never was on sea or shore." We but please 
and tantalise ourselves with beautiful dreams. 

The children of the brain become to us actual exist- 
ences, more actual, indeed, than the people who impinge 
upon us in the street, or who live next door. We are 
more intimate with Shakespeare's men and women 
than we are with our contemporaries, and they are, on 
the whole, better company. They are more beautiful 
in form and feature, and they express themselves in a 
way that the most gifted strive after in vain. What if 
Shakespeare's people could walk out of the play-books 
and settle down upon some spot of earth and conduct 
life there? There would be found humanity's whitest 
wheat, the world's unalloyed gold. The very winds 
could not visit the place roughly. No king's court 
could present you such an array. Where else could we 
find a philosopher like Hamlet ? a friend like Antonio ? 
a witty fellow like Mercutio? where else Imogen's 
piquant face ? Portia's gravity and womanly sweetness ? 



On Vagabonds 217 

Rosalind's true heart and silvery laughter? Cordelia's 
beauty of holiness? These would form the centre of 
the court, but the purlieus, how many-coloured! Mal- 
volio would walk mincingly in the sunshine there: 
Autolycus would filch purses. Sir Andrew Aguecheek 
and Sir Toby Belch would be eternal boon companions. 
And as FalstafE sets out homeward from the tavern, 
the portly knight leading the revellers like a three-decker 
a line of frigates, they are encountered by Dogberry, who 
summons them to stand and answer to the watch as they 
are honest men. If Mr. Dickens's characters were 
gathered together, they would constitute a town populous 
enough to send a representative to Parliament. Let us 
enter. The style of architecture is unparalleled. There 
is an individuality about the buildings. In some obscure 
way they remind one of human faces. There are houses 
sly-looking, houses wicked-looking, houses pompous- 
looking. Heaven bless us! what a rakish pump! what 
a self-important town-hall! what a hard-hearted prison! 
The dead walls are covered with advertisements of Mr. 
Sleary's circus. Newman Noggs comes shambling 
along. Mr. and the Misses Pecksniff come sailing 
down the sunny side of the street. Miss Mercy's parasol 
is gay; papa's neck-cloth is white, and terribly starched. 
Dick Swiveller leans against a wall, his hands in his 
pockets, a primrose held between his teeth, contemplating 
the opera of Punch and Judy, which is being conducted 
under the management of Messrs. Codlin and Short. 
You turn a corner and you meet the coffin of little Paul 
Dombey borne along. Who would have thought of 
encountering a funeral in this place? In the afternoon 
you hear the rich tones of the organ from Miss La 
Creevy's first floor, for Tom Pinch has gone to live there 



218 Essays Every Child Should Know 

now; and as you know all the people as you know your 
own brothers and sisters, and consequently require no 
letters of introduction, you go up and talk with the dear 
old fellow about all his friends and your friends, and 
toward evening he takes your arm, and you walk out 
to see poor Nelly's grave — a place which he visits often, 
and which he dresses with flowers with his own hands. 
I know this is the idlest dreaming, but all of us have a 
sympathy with the creatures of the drama and the novel. 
Around the hardest cark and toil lies the imaginative 
world of the poets and romancists, and thither we 
sometimes escape to snatch a mouthful of serener air. 
There our best lost feelings have taken a human shape. 
We suppose that boyhood with its impulses and enthu- 
siasms has subsided with the gray cynical man whom we 
have known these many years. Not a bit of it. It 
has escaped into the world of the poet, and walks a love- 
flushed Romeo in immortal youth. We suppose that the 
Mary of fifty years since, the rosebud of a girl that crazed 
our hearts, blossomed into the spouse of Jenkins, the 
stockbroker, and is now a grandmother. Not at all. 
She is Juliet leaning from the balcony, or Portia talking 
on the moonlight lawns at Belmont. There walk the 
shadows of our former selves. All that Time steals he 
takes thither; and to live in that world is to live in our 
lost youth, our lost generosities, illusions, and romances. 
In middle-class life, and in the professions, when a 
standard or ideal is tacitly set up, to which every member 
is expected to conform on pain of having himself talked 
about, and wise heads shaken over him, the quick feel- 
ings of the vagabond are not frequently found. Yet, 
thanks to Nature, who sends her leafage and flowerage 
up through all kinds of debris^ and who takes a blossomy 



On Vagabonds 219 

possession of ruined walls and desert places, it is never 
altogether dead! And of vagabonds, not the least 
delightful is he who retains poetry and boyish spirits 
beneath the crust of a profession. Mr. Carlyle commends 
"central fire," and very properly commends it most 
when " well covered in." In the case of a professional 
man, this "central fire" does not manifest itself in waste- 
ful explosiveness, but in secret genial heat, visible in 
fruits of charity and pleasant humour. The physician 
who is a humourist commends himself doubly to a sick- 
bed. His patients are as much indebted for their cure 
to his smile, his voice, and a certain irresistible health- 
fulness that surrounds him, as they are to his skill and 
his prescriptions. The lawyer who is a humourist is 
a man of ten thousand. How easily the w^orldly-wise 
face, puckered over a stiff brief, relaxes into the lines of 
laughter. He sees many an evil side of human nature, 
he is familiar with slanders and injustice, all kinds of 
human bitterness and falsity; but neither his hand nor 
his heart becomes "imbued with that it works in"; and 
the little admixture of acid, inevitable from his circum- 
stances and mode of life, but heightens the flavour of 
his humour. But of all humourists of the professional 
class, I prefer the clerg)'man, especially if he is well 
stricken in years, and has been anchored all his life in 
a country charge. He is none of your loud wits. There 
is a lady-like delicacy in his mind, a constant sense of 
his holy office, which warn him off dangerous subjects. 
This reserve, however, does but improve the quality of 
his mirth. What his humour loses in boldness, it gains 
in depth and slyness. And as the good man has seldom 
the opportunity of making a joke, or of procuring an 
auditor who can understand one, the dewy glitter of his 



220 Essays Every Child Should Know 

eyes, as you sit opposite him, and his heartfelt enjoyment 
of the matter in hand, are worth going a considerable 
way to witness. It is not, however, in the professions 
that the vagabond is commonly found. Over these that 
awful and ubiquitous female, Mrs. Grundy — at once 
Fate, Nemesis, and Fury — ^presides. The glare of her 
eye is professional danger, the pointing of her finger is 
professional death. When she utters a man's name, he 
is lost. The true vagabond is to be met with in other 
walks of life — ^among actors, poets, painters. These 
may grow in any way their nature directs. They are 
not required to conform to any traditional pattern. 
With regard to the respectabilities and the "minor 
morals," the world permits them to be libertines. Be- 
sides, it is a temperament peculiarly sensitive, or generous, 
or enjoying, which at the beginning impels these to their 
special pursuits; and that temperament, like everything 
else in the world, strengthens with use, and grows with 
what it feeds on. We look upon an actor, sitting amongst 
ordinary men and women, with a certain curiosity — 
we regard him as a creature from another planet, almost. 
His life and his world are quite different from ours. 
The orchestra, the footlights, and the green baize curtain, 
divide us. He is a monarch half his time — his entrance 
and his exit proclaimed by flourish of trumpet. He 
speaks in blank verse, is wont to take his seat at gilded 
banquets, to drink nothing out of a pasteboard goblet. 
The actor's world has a history amusing to read, and 
lines of noble and splendid traditions, stretching back 
to charming Nelly's time, and earlier. The actor has 
strange experiences. He sees the other side of the moon. 
We roar at Grimaldi's funny face: he sees the lines of 
pain in it. We hear Romeo wish to be "a glove upon 



On Vagabonds 221 

that hand that he might touch that cheek ": three minutes 
afterward he beholds Romeo refresh himself with a pot 
of porter. We see the Moor, who "loved not wisely, 
but too well," smother Desdemona with the nuptial 
bolster: he sees them sit down to a hot supper. We 
always think of the actor as on the stage: he always 
thinks of us as in the boxes. In justice to the poets 
of the present day, it may be noticed that they have im- 
proved on their brethren in Johnson's time, who were, 
according to Lord Macaulay, hunted by bailiffs and 
familiar with sponging-houses, and who, when hospitably 
entertained, were wont to disturb the household of the 
entertainer by roaring for hot punch at four o'clock in 
the morning. Since that period the poets have improved 
in the decencies of life: they wear broadcloth, and 
settle their tailors' accounts even as other men. At 
this present moment Her Majesty's poets are perhaps 
the most respectable of Her Majesty's subjects. They 
are all teetotallers; if they sin, it is in rhyme, and then 
only to point a moral. In past days the poet flew from 
flower to flower, gathering his honey; but he bore a 
sting, too, as the rude hand that touched him could 
testify. He freely gathers his honey as of old, but the 
satiric sting has been taken away. He lives at peace 
with all men — his brethren excepted. About the true 
poet still there is something of the ancient spirit — the 
old " flash and outbreak of the fiery mind," the old enthu- 
siasm and dash of humorous eccentricity. But he is fast 
disappearing from the catalogue of vagabonds — fast 
getting commonplace, I fear. Many people suspect 
him of dulness. Besides, such a crowd of well-meaning, 
amiable, most respectable men have broken down of 
late years the pales of Parnassus, and become squatters 



222 Essays Every Child Should Know 

on the sacred mount, that the claim of poets to be a 
pecuHar people is getting disallowed. Never in this 
world's history were they so numerous; and although 
some people deny that they are poets, few are cantan- 
kerous enough or intrepid enough to assert that they are 
vagabonds. The painter is the most agreeable of 
vagabonds. His art is a pleasant one; it demands some 
little manual exertion, and it takes him at times into the 
open air. It is pleasant, too, in this, that lines and 
colours are so much more palpable than words, and the 
appeal of his work to his practised eye has some satis- 
faction in it. He knows what he is about. He does 
not altogether lose his critical sense, as the poet does, 
when familiarity stales his subject, and takes the splen- 
dour out of his images. Moreover, his work is more 
profitable than the poet's. I suppose there are just as 
few great painters at the present day as there are great 
poets; yet the yearly receipts of the artists of England 
far exceed the receipts of the singers. A picture can 
usually be painted in less time than a poem can be written. 
A second-rate pfcture has a certain market value — its 
frame is at least something. A second-rate poem is 
utterly worthless, and no one will buy it on account of 
its binding. A picture is your own exclusive property: 
it is a costly article of furniture. You hang it on your 
walls, to be admired by all the world. Pictures represent 
wealth : the possession of them is a luxury. The portrait- 
painter is of all men the most beloved. You sit to him 
willingly, and put on your best looks. You are inclined 
to be pleased with his work, on account of the strong 
prepossession you entertain for his subject. To sit 
for one's portrait is like being present at one's own 
creation. It is an admirable excuse for egotism. You 



0?i Vagabonds 223 

would not discourse on the falcon-like curve which 
distinguishes your nose, or the sweet serenity of your 
reposing lips, or the mildness of the eye that spreads a 
light over your countenance, in the presence of a fellow- 
creature for the whole world; yet you do not hesitate to 
express the most favourable opinion of the features start- 
ing out on you from the wet canvas. The interest the 
painter takes in his task flatters you. And when the 
sittings are over, and you behold yourself hanging on 
your own wall, looking as if you could direct kingdoms or 
lead armies, you feel grateful to the artist. He ministers 
to your self-love, and you pay him his hire without 
wincing. Your heart warms toward him as it would 
toward a poet who addresses you in an ode of panegyric, 
the kindling terms of which — a little astonishing to your 
friends — ^}^ou believe in your heart of hearts to be the 
simple truth, and, in the matter of expression, not over- 
coloured in the very least. The portrait-painter has a 
shrewd eye for character, and is usually the best anecdote- 
monger in the world. His craft brings him into contact 
with many faces, and he learns to compare them curiously, 
and to extract their meanings. He can interpret 
wrinkles; he can look through the eyes into the man; 
he can read a whole foregone history in the lines about 
the mouth. Besides, from the good understanding 
which usually exists between the artist and his sitter, the 
latter is inclined somewhat to unbosom himself; little 
things leak out in conversation, not much in themselves, 
but pregnant enough to the painter's sense, who pieces 
them together, and constitutes a tolerably definite image. 
The man who paints your face knows you better than 
your intimate friends do, and has a clearer knowledge 
of your amiable weaknesses, and of the secret motives 



224 Essays Every Child Should Know 

which influence your conduct, than you oftentimes have 
yourself. A good portrait is a kind of biography, and 
neither painter nor biographer can carry out his task 
satisfactorily unless he be admitted behind the scenes. 
I think that the landscape painter, who has acquired 
sufficient mastery in his art to satisfy his own critical 
sense, and who is appreciated enough to find purchasers, 
and thereby to keep the wolf from the door, must be of 
all mankind the happiest. Other men live in cities, 
bound down to some settled task and order of life; but 
he is a nomad, and wherever he goes "Beauty pitches 
her tents before him." He is smitten by a passionate 
love for Nature, and is privileged to follow her into her 
solitary haunts and recesses. Nature is his mistress, 
and he is continually making declarations of his love. 
When one thinks of ordinary occupations, how one 
envies him, flecking his oak-tree boll with sunlight, 
tinging with rose the cloud of the morning in which the 
lark is hid, making the sea's swift fringe of foaming lace 
outspread itself on the level sands, in which the pebbles 
gleam forever wet. The landscape painter's memory 
is inhabited by the fairest visions— dawn burning on the 
splintered peaks that the eagles know, while the valleys 
beneath are yet filled with uncertain light; the bright 
blue morn stretching over miles of moor and moun- 
tain; the slow up-gathering of the bellied thunder- 
cloud; summer lakes, and cattle knee-deep in them; 
rustic bridges forever crossed by old women in scarlet 
cloaks; old-fashioned waggons resting on the scrubby 
common, the waggoner lazy and wayworn, the dog 
couched on the ground, its tongue hanging out in the 
heat: boats drawn up on the shore at sunset; the fisher's 
children looking seawards, the red light full on their 



On Vagabonds 225 

dresses and faces; farther back, a clump of cottages, 
with bait-baskets about the dog and the smoke of the 
evening meal coiling up into the coloured air. These 
things are forever with him. Beauty, which is a luxury 
to other men, is his daily food. Happy vagabond, who 
lives the whole summer through in the light of his mis- 
tress's face, and who does nothing the whole winter 
except recall the splendour of her smiles! 

The vagabond, as I have explained and sketched him, 
is not a man to tremble at, or avoid as if he wore con- 
tagion in his touch. He is upright, generous, innocent, 
is conscientious in the performance of his duties; and 
if a little eccentric and fond of the open air, he is full of 
good nature and mirthful charity. He may not make 
money so rapidly as you do, but I cannot help thinking 
that he enjoys life a great deal more. The quick feeling 
of life, the exuberance of animal spirits which break 
out in the traveller, the sportsman, the poet, the painter, 
should be more generally diffused. We should be all 
the better and all the happier for it. Life ought to be 
freer, heartier, more enjoyable than it is at present. If 
the professional fetter must be worn, let it be worn as 
lightly as possible. It should never be permitted to 
canker the limbs. We are a free people — we have an 
unshackled press — we have an open platform, and can 
say our say upon it, no king or despot making us afraid. 
We send representatives to Parliament; the franchise is 
always going to be extended. All this is very fine, and 
we do well to glory in our privileges as Britons. But, 
although we enjoy greater political freedom than any 
other people, we are the victims of a petty social tyranny. 
We are our own despots — we tremble at a neighbour's 
whisper. A man may say what he likes on a public 



226 Essays Every Child Should Know 

platform — he may publish whatever opinion he chooses 
— but he dare not wear a peculiar fashion of hat on 
the street. Eccentricity is an outlaw. Public opinion 
blows like the east wind, blighting bud and blossom 
on the human bough. As a consequence of all this, 
society is losing picturesqueness and variety — we are 
all growing up after one pattern. In other matters 
than architecture past time may be represented 
by the wonderful ridge of the Old Town of Edin- 
burgh, where everything is individual and characteristic; 
the present time by the streets and squares of the New 
Town, where everything is gray, cold, and respectable; 
where every house is the other's alter ego. It is true that 
life is healthier in the formal square than in the piled-up 
picturesqueness of the Canongate — quite true that sanitary 
conditions are better observed — that pure water flows 
through every tenement like blood through a human 
body, that daylight has free access, and that the apart- 
ments are larger and higher in the roof. But every gain 
is purchased at the expense of some loss; and it is best 
to combine, if possible, the excellences of the old and the 
new. By all means retain the modern breadth of light, 
and range of space; by all means have water plentiful, 
and bed-chambers ventilated, — but at the same time 
have some little freak of fancy without — some ornament 
about the door, some device about the window — some- 
thing to break the cold, gray, stony uniformity; or, to 
leave metaphor, which is always dangerous ground — for 
I really don't wish to advocate Ruskinism and the 
Gothic — it would be better to have, along with our 
modern enlightenment, our higher tastes and purer 
habits, a greater individuality of thought and manner; 
better, while retaining all that we have gained, that 



On Vagabonds 227 

harmless eccentricity should be respected— that every 
man should be allowed to grow in his own way, so long 
as he does not infringe on the rights of his neighbour, or 
insolently thrust himself between him and the sun. A 
little more air and light should J)e let in upon life. I 
should think the world has stood long enough under the 
drill of Adjutant Fashion. It is hard work; the posture 
is wearisome, and Fashion is an awful martinet, and has 
a quick eye, and comes down mercilessly on the unfortu- 
nate wight who cannot square his toes to the approved 
pattern, or who appears upon parade with a darn in 
his coat, or with a shoulder-belt insufficiently pipe- 
clayed. It is killing work. Suppose we try "standing 
at ease" for a little! 

—Alexander Smith. 



XV 

MARJORIE FLEMING 

ONE November afternoon in 1810 — the year in 
which " Waverley " was resumed and laid aside 
again, to be finished off, its last two volumes in three 
weeks, and made immortal in 1814, and when its author, 
by the death of Lord Melville, narrowly escaped getting 
a civil appointment in India — three men, evidently 
lawyers, might have been seen escaping like schoolboys 
from the Parliament House, and speeding arm-in-arm 
down Bank Street and the Mound, in the teeth of a surly 
blast of sleet. 

The three friends sought the Meld of the low wall old 
Edinburgh boys remember well, and sometimes miss 
now, as they struggle with the stout west wind. 

The three were curiously unlike each other. One, " a 
little man of feeble make, who would be unhappy if his 
pony got beyond a foot pace," slight, with "small, elegant 
features, hectic cheek, and soft hazel eyes, the index of 
the quick, sensitive spirit within, as if he had the warm 
heart of a woman, her genuine enthusiasm, and some of 
her weaknesses." Another, as unlike a woman as a 
man can be; homely, almost common, in look and figure; 
his hat and his coat, and indeed his entire covering, 
worn to the quick, but all of the best material; what 
redeemed him from vulgarity and meanness were his eyes, 
deep set, heavily thatched, keen, hungry, shrewd, with 
a slumbering glow far in, as if they could be dangerous; 

228 



Marjorie Fleming 229 

a man to care nothing for at first glance, but some- 
how to give a second and not-forgetting look at. The 
third was the biggest of the three, and though lame, 
nimble, and all rough and alive with power; had you 
met him anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddes- 
dale storefarmer, come of gentle blood; "a stout, blunt 
carle," as he says of himself, with the swing and stride 
and the eye of a man of the hills — a large, sunny, out- 
of-door air all about him. On his broad and some- 
what stooping shoulders, was set that head which, with 
Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all 
the world. 

He was in high spirits, keeping his companions and 
himself in roars of laughter, and every now and then 
seizing them, and stopping, that they might take their fill 
of the fun ; there they stood shaking with laughter, " not 
an inch of their body free" from its grip. At George 
Street they parted, one to Rose Court, behind St. 
Andrew's Church, one to Albany Street, the other, our 
big and limping friend, to Castle Street. 

We need hardly give their names. The first was Wil- 
liam Erskine, afterwards Lord Kinnedder, chased out of 
the world by a calumny, killed by its foul breath — 

And at the touch of wrong, without a strife 

Slipped in a moment out of life. 

There is nothing in literature more beautiful or more 
pathetic than Scott's love and sorrow for this friend of 
his youth. 

The second was William Clerk — the " Darsie Latimer " 
of "Redgauntlet;" "a man," as Scott says, "of the most 
acute intellects and powerful apprehension," but of more 
powerful indolence, so as to leave the world with little 
more than the report of what he might have been — 



230 Essays Every Child Should Know 

a humorist as genuine, though not quite so savagely 
Swiftian as his brother, Lord Eldin, neither of whom had 
much of that commonest and best of all the humours, 
called good. 

The third we all know. What has he not done for 
every one of us? Who else ever, except Shakespeare, 
so diverted mankind, entertained and entertains a world 
so liberally, so wholesomely? We are fain to say, not 
even Shakespeare, for his is something deeper than diver- 
sion, something higher than pleasure, and yet who would 
care to split this hair ? 

Had any one watched him closely before and after the 
parting, what a change he would see! The bright, 
broad laugh, the shrewd, jovial word, the man of the 
Parliament House and of the world; and next step, moody, 
the light of his eye withdrawn, as if seeing things that 
were invisible; his shut mouth, like a child's, so im- 
pressionable, so innocent, so sad; he was now all within, 
as before he was all without; hence his brooding look. 
As the snow blattered in his face, he muttered, " How it 
raves and drifts! On-ding o' snaw — ay, that's the word 
— on-ding — ." He was now at his own door, "Castle 
Street, No. 39." He opened the door, and went straight 
to his den; that wondrous workshop, where, in one year, 
1823, when he was fifty-two, he wrote "Peveril of the 
Peak," "Quentin Durward," and "St. Ronan's Well," 
besides much else. We once took the foremost of our 
novelists, the greatest, we would say, since Scott, into 
this room, and could not but mark the solemnising effect 
of sitting where the great magician sat so often and so 
long, and looking out upon that little shabby bit of sky 
and that back green, where faithful Camp lies. 

He sat down in his large green morocco elbow-chair 



Marjorie Fleming 231 

drew himself close to his table, and glowered and gloomed 
at his writing apparatus, *'a very handsome old box, 
richly carved, lined with crimson velvet, and containing 
ink-bottles, taper-stand, etc., in silver, the whole in such 
order, that it might have come from the silversmith's 
window half an hour before." He took out his paper, 
then starting up angrily, said, " 'Go spin, you jade, go 
spin.' No, d — it, it won't do — 

My spinnin* wheel is auld and stiff, 

The rock o't wunna stand, sir, 
To keep the temper-pin in tiff 
Employs ower aft my hand, sir. 

I am off the fang. I can make nothing of *Waverley' to- 
day; I'll awa' to Marjorie. Come wi' me, Maida, you 
thief." The great creature rose slowly, and the pair were 
off, Scott taking a maud (a plaid) with him. " White as 
a frosted plum-cake, by jingo 1" said he, when he got to 
the street. Maida gambolled and whisked among the 
snow, and his master strode across to Young Street, and 
through it to i North Charlotte Street, to the house of 
his dear friend, Mrs. William Keith, of Corstorphine 
Hill, niece of Mrs. Keith, of Ravelston, of whom he said 
at her death, eight years after, "Much tradition, and 
that of the best, has died with this excellent old lady, one 
of the few persons whose spirits, cleanliness and freshness 
of mind and body made old age lovely and desirable." 

Sir Walter was in that house almost every day, and 
had a key, so in he and the hound went, shaking them- 
selves in the lobby. "Marjorie! Marjorie!" shouted 
her friend, " where are ye, my bonnie wee croodlin doo ? " 
In a moment a bright, eager child of seven was in his 
arms, and he was kissing her all over. Out came Mrs. 
Keith. "Come yer ways in, Wattie." "No, not now. 



232 Essays Every Child Should Know 

I am going to take Mar jorie wi' me, and you may come 
to your tea in Duncan Roy's sedan, and bring the bairn 
home in your lap." "Tak' Marjorie, and it on-ding 
snaw!^^ said Mrs. Keith. He said to himself, " On-ding, 
— that's odd — that is the very word." "Hoot, awa! 
look here," and he displayed the corner of his plaid, made 
to hold lambs (the true shepherd's plaid, consisting of 
two breadths sewed together, and uncut at one end, 
making a poke or cul-de-sac), "Tak' yer lamb," said 
she, laughing at the contrivance, and so the Pet was first 
well happit up, and then put, laughing silently, into the 
plaid neuk, and the shepherd strode off with his lamb — 
Maida gambolling through the snow, and running races 
in her mirth. 

Didn't he face ''the angry airt," and make her bield 
his bosom, and into his own room with her, and lock the 
door, and out with the warm, rosy, little wifie, who took 
it all with great composure! There the two remained 
for three or more hours, making the house ring with their 
laughter; you can fancy the big man's and Maidie's 
laugh. Having made the fire cheery, he set her down in 
his ample chair, and standing sheepishly before her, 
began to say his lesson, which happened to he — " Ziccotty 
diccotty, dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock 
struck wan, down the mouse ran, ziccotty, diccotty, 
dock." This done repeatedly till she was pleased, she 
gave him his new lesson, gravely and slowly, timing it 
upon her small fingers — he saying it after her — 

Wonery, twoery, tickery, seven; 
Alibi, crackaby, ten, and eleverf, 
Pin, pan, musky, dan; 
Tweedle-um, twoddle-um, 
Twenty-wan; eerie, orie, ourie, 
You, are, out. 



Marjorie Fleming 233 

He pretended to great difficulty and she rebuked him 
with most comical gravity, treating him as a child. He 
used to say that when he came to AHbi Crackaby he 
broke down, and Pin-Pan, Musky-Dan, Tweedle-um 
Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said 
Musky-Dan especially was beyond endurance, bringing 
up an Irishman and his hat fresh from the Spice Islands 
and odoriferous Jnd; she getting quite bitter in her dis- 
pleasure at his ill-behaviour and stupidness. 

Then he would read ballads to her in his own glorious 
way, the two getting wild with excitement over " Gil Mor- 
rice" or the "Baron of Smailholm"; and he would take 
her on his knee, and make her repeat Constance's 
speeches in "King John," till he swayed to and fro, 
sobbing his fill. Fancy the gifted little creature, like one 
possessed, repeating — 

For I am sick, and capable of fears. 
Oppressed with wrong, and therefore full of fears 
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears; 
A woman, naturally born to fears. 

If thou that bidst me be content, wert grim, 
Ugly and slanderous to thy mother's womb, 
Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious — . 

Or, drawing herself up "to the height of her great 
argument," 

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud, 

For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout, 

Here I and sorrow sit. 

Scott used to say that he was amazed at her power over 
him, saying to Mrs. Keith, " She's the most extraordinary 
creature I ever met with, and her repeating of Shake- 
speare overpowers me as nothing else does." 



234 Essays Every Child Should Know 

Thanks to the unforgetting sister of this dear child, 
who has much of the sensibiUty and fun of her who has 
been in her small grave these fifty and more years, we 
have now before us the letters and journals of Pet Mar- 
jorie — before us lies and gleams her rich brown hair, 
bright and sunny as if yesterday's, with the words on the 
paper, " Cut out in her last illness," and two pictures of 
her by her beloved Isabella, whom she worshipped; 
there are the faded old scraps of paper, hoarded still, over 
which her warm breath and her warm little heart had 
poured themselves; there is the old water-mark, "Lin- 
gard, 1808." The two portraits are very like each other, 
but plainly done at different times; it is a chubby, healthy 
face, deepset, brooding eyes, as eager to tell what is going 
on within as to gather in all the glories from without; 
quick with the wonder and the pride of life; they are 
eyes that would not be soon satisfied with seeing; eyes 
that would devour their object, and yet childlike and 
fearless; and that is a mouth that will not be soon satis- 
fied with love; it has a curious likeness to Scott's own, 
which has always appeared to us his sweetest, most 
mobile and speaking feature. 

There she is, looking straight at us as she did at him, 
fearless and full of love, passionate, wild, wilful, fancy's 
child. One cannot look at it without thinking of Words- 
worth's lines on poor Hartley Coleridge: — 

blessed vision, happy child! 
Thou art so exquisitely wild, 

1 thought of thee with many fears, 

Of what might be thy lot in future years. 

I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest, 

Lord of thy house and hospitality; 

And Grief, uneasy lover! ne'er at rest, 

But when she sat within the touch of thee. 



Marjorie Fleming 235 

Oh, too industrious folly! 

Oh, vain and causeless melancholy! 

Nature will either end thee quite. 

Or, lengthening out thy season of delight 

Preserve for thee by individual right, 

A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flock. 

And we can imagine Scott, when holding his warm, 
plump little playfellow in his arms, repeating that stately 
friend's lines: — 

Loving she is, and tractable, though wild, 

And Innocence hath privilege in her. 

To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes. 

And feats of cunning; and the pretty round 

Of trespasses, affected to provoke 

Mock chastisement and partnership in play. 

And, as a fagot sparkles on the hearth. 

Not less if unattended and alone. 

Than when both young and old sit gathered round. 

And take delight in its activity, 

Even so this happy creature of herself 

Is all-sufficient; solitude to her 

Is blithe society; she fills the air 

With gladness and involuntary songs. 

But we will let her disclose herself. We need hardly 
say that all this is true, and that these letters are as really 
Marjorie's as was this light brown hair; indeed, you 
could as easily fabricate the one as the other. 

There was an old servant, Jeanie Robertson, who was 
forty years in her grandfather's family. Marjorie Flem- 
ing, or, as she is called in the letters, and by Sir Walter, 
Maidie, was the last child she kept. Jeanie's wages 
never exceeded £3 a year, and, when she left service, she 
had saved £40. She was devotedly attached to Maidie, 
rather despising and ill-using her sister Isabella — a. 



236 Essays Every Child Should Know 

beautiful and gentle child. This partiality made Maidie 
apt at times to domineer over Isabella. "I mention 
this" (writes her surviving sister) "for the purpose of 
telling you an instance of Maidie's generous justice. 
When only five years old, when walking in Raith grounds, 
the two children had run on before, and old Jeanie 
remembered they might come too near a dangerous mill- 
lade. She called to them to tiurn back. Maidie heeded 
her not, rushed all the faster on, and fell, and would 
have been lost, had her sister not pulled her back, saving 
her life, but tearing her clothes. Jeanie flew on Isabella 
to 'give it her' for spoiling her favourite's dress; Maidie 
rushed in between, crying out, Tay (whip) Maidie as 
much as you like, and I '11 not say one word; but touch 
Isy, and I'll roar like a bull!' Years after Maidie was 
resting in her grave, my mother used to take me to the 
place, and told the story always in the exact same words." 
This Jeanie must have been a character. She took great 
pride in exhibiting Maidie's brother William's Calvinistic 
acquirements, when nineteen months old, to the officers 
of a militia regiment then quartered in Kirkcaldy. This 
performance was so amusing that it was often repeated, 
and the little theologian was presented by them with a 
cap and feathers. Jeanie's glory was "putting him 
through the carritch" (catechism) in broad Scotch, 
beginning at the beginning with, "Wha made ye, ma 
bonnie man ? " For the correctness of this and the three 
next replies Jeanie had no anxiety, but the tone changed 
to menace, and the closed nieve (fist) was shaken in the 
child's face as she demanded, " Of what are you made ? " 
"Dirt," was the answer uniformly given, "WuU ye 
never learn to say dust, ye thrawn deevil?" with a cuff 
from the opened hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder. 



Marjorie Fleming 237 

Here is Maidie's first letter before she was six. The 
spelling unaltered, and there are no "commoes." 

"My dear Isa — I now sit down to answer all your 
kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to 
write to me. This is the first time I ever wrote a letter 
in my Life. There are a great many Girls in the Square 
and they cry just like a pig when we are under the painfull 
necessity of putting it to Death. Miss Potune a Lady of 
my acquaintance praises me dreadfully. I repeated 
something out of Dean Swift, and she said I was fit for 
the stage, and you may think I was primmed up with 
majestick Pride, but upon my word I felt myselfe turn a 
little birsay — birsay is a word which is a word that Wil- 
liam composed which is as you may suppose a little 
enraged. This horrid fat simpliton says that my Aunt 
is beautifull which is intirely impossible for that is not her 
nature.'* 

What a peppery little pen we wield! What could that 
have been out of the Sardonic Dean ? what other child 
of that age would have used "beloved" as she does? 
This power of affection, this faculty of fedoving, and wild 
hunger to be beloved, comes out more and more. She 
perilled her all upon it, and it may have been as well — 
we know, indeed, that it was far better — for her that 
this wealth of love was so soon withdrawn to its one only 
infinite Giver and Receiver. This must have been the 
law of her earthly life. Love was indeed " her Lord and 
King"; and it was perhaps well for her that she found 
so soon that her and our only Lord and King Himself is 
Love. 

Here are bits from her Diary at Braehead: — "The 
day of my existence here has been delightful and enchant- 
ing. On Saturday I expected no less than three well 



238 Essays Every Child Should Know 

made Bucks the names of whom is here advertised. Mr. 
Geo. Crackey (Craigie), and Wm. Keith and Jn. Keith — 
the first is the funniest of every one of them. Mr. Cra- 
key and walked to Crakyhall (Craigiehall) hand in hand 
in Innocence and matitation (meditation) sweet thinking 
on the kind love which flows in our tender hearted mind 
which is overflowing with majestic pleasure no one was 
ever so polite to me in the hole state of my existence. 
Mr. Craky you must know is a great Buck and pretty 
good-looking. 

" I am at Ravelston enjoying nature's fresh air. The 
birds are singing sweetly — the calf doth frish and nature 
shows her glorious face." 

Here is a confession: — "I confess I have been very 
more like a little young divil than a creature for when 
Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and my mul- 
tiplication and to be good and all my other lessons I 
stamped with my foot and threw my new hat which she 
had made on the ground and was sulky and was dread- 
fully passionate, but she never whiped me but said 
Marjory go into another room and think what a great 
crime you are committing letting your temper git the 
better of you. But I went so sulkily that the Devil got 
the better of fme but she never never whips me so 
that I think I would be the better of it and the next time 
that I behave ill I think she should do it for she never 
does it. . . . Isabella has given me praise for check- 
ing my temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling 
an hole hour teaching me to write." 

Our poor little wifie, she has no doubts of the person- 
ality of the Devil! "Yesterday I behave extremely ill 
in God's most holy church for I would never attend my- 
self nor let Isabella attend which was a great crime for 



Marjorie Fleming 239 

she often, often tells me that when to or three are geath- 
ered together God is in the midst of them, and it was the 
very same Divil that tempted Job that tempted me I am 
sure; but he resisted Satan though he had boils and 
many many other misfortunes which I have escaped. 
... I am now going to tell you the horible and 
wretched plaege (plague) that my multiplication gives 
me you can't conceive it the most Devilish thing is 8 
times 8 and 7 times 7 it is what nature itself cant endure." 

This is delicious; and what harm is there in her 
*' Devilish"? it is strong language merely; even old 
Rowland Hill used to say "he grudged the Devil those 
rough and ready words." "I walked to that delightful 
place Crakyhall with a delightful young man beloved by 
all his friends especially by me his loveress, but I must 
not talk any more about him for Isa said it is not proper 
for to speak of gentalmen but I will never forget him! 
. . . I am very very glad that satan has not given 
me boils and many other misfortunes — In the holy bible 
these words are written that the Devil goes like a roar- 
ing lyon in search of his pray but the lord lets us escape 
from him but we" (pauvre petite!) "do not strive with 
this awful Spirit. . . • To-day I pronunced a 
word which should never come out of a lady's lips it was 
that I called John a Impudent Bitch. I will tell you 
what I think made me in so bad a humour is I got one or 
two of that bad bad sina (senna) tea to-day," — a, better 
excuse for bad humour and bad language than most. 

She has been reading the Book of Esther: "It was a 
dreadful thing that Haman was hanged on the very gal- 
lows which he had prepared for Mordeca to hang him 
and his ten sons thereon and it was very wrong and cruel 
to hang his sons for they did not commit the crime; but 



240 Essays Every Child Should Know 

then Jesus was not then come to teach us to he mercifuL^^ 
This is wise and beautiful — ^has upon it the very dew 
of youth and of holiness. Out of the mouths of babes 
and sucklings He perfects his praise. 

" This is Saturday and I am very glad of it because I 
have play half the Day and I get money too but alas I 
owe Isabella 4 pence for I am finned 2 pence whenever 
I bite my nails. Isabella is teaching me to make simme 
colings nots of interrigations peorids commoes, etc. . . . 
As this is Sunday I will meditate upon Senciable and 
Religious subjects. First I should be very thankful I 
am not a begger." 

This amount of meditation and thankfulness seems to 
have been all she was able for. 

"I am going to-morrow to a dehghtful place, Brae- 
head by name, belonging to Mrs. Crraford, where there 
is ducks hens bubblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine which 
is delightful. I think it is shocking to think that the dog 
and cat should bear them" (this is a meditation physio- 
logical), "and they are drowned after all. I would 
rather have a man-dog than a woman-dog, because they 
do not bear like women-dogs; it is a hard case — it is 
shocking. I cam here to enjoy natures delightful breath 
it is sweeter than a fial (phial) of rose oil." 

Braehead is the farm the historical Jock Howison 
asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, " the gude 
man o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the services of his 
flail when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig 
with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from 
that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and 
victorious thrasher. Braehead is held on the condition 
of the possessor being ready to present the King with a 
ewer and basin to wash his hands, Jock having done this 



Marjorle Fleming 241 

for his unknown king after the splore, and when George 
the Fourth came to Edinburgh this ceremony was per- 
formed in silver at Holyrood. It is a lovely neuk this 
Braehead, preserved almost as it was two hundred years 
ago. "Lot and his wife," mentioned by Maidie — two 
quaintly cropped yew-trees — still thrive; the burn runs 
as it did in her time, and sings the same quiet tune — as 
much the same and as different as Now and Then. The 
house full of old family relics and pictures, the sun shin- 
ing on them through the small deep windows with their 
plate glass; and there, blinking at the sun, and chatter- 
ing contentedly, is a parrot, that might, for its looks of 
eld, have been in the ark, and domineered over and 
deaved the dove. Everything about the place is old and 
fresh. 

This is beautiful: — "I am very sorry to say that I 
forgot God — that is to say I forgot to pray to-day and 
Isabella told me that I should be thankful that God did 
not forget me — if he did, O what would become of me if I 
was in danger and God not friends with me — I must 
go to unquenchable fire and if I was tempted to sin — 
how could I resist it O no I will never do it again — no 
no— if I can help it." (Canny wee wifie!) "My re- 
ligion is greatly falling off because I don't pray with so 
much attention when I am saying my prayers, and my 
character is lost among the Braehead people. I hope I 
will be religious again — but as for regaining my char- 
acter I despare for it." (Poor little " habit and repute ! ") 

Her temper, her passion, and her "badness" are al- 
most daily confessed and deplored: — "I will never again 
trust to my own power, for I see that I cannot be good 
w.'thout God's assistance — I will not trust in my own 
selfe, and Isa's health will be quite ruined by me — it 



242 Essays Every Child Should Know 

will indeed." "Isa has giving me advice, which is, 
that when I feal Satan beginning to tempt me, that 
I flea him and he would flea me." "Remorse is the 
worst thing to bear, and I am afraid that I will fall a 
marter to it." 

Poor dear little sinner! — Here comes the world again: 
" In my travels I met with a handsome lad named Charles 
Balfour Esq., and from him I got ofers of marage — 
offers of marage, did I say ? Nay plenty heard me." A 
fine scent for "breach of promise!" 

This is abrupt and strong: — "The Divil is curced and 
all works. 'T is a fine work Newton on the projecies. I 
wonder if there is another book of poems comes near the 
Bible. The Divil always girns at the sight of the Bible." 
"Miss Potune" (her "simpliton" friend) "is very fat; 
she pretends to be very learned. She says she saw a 
stone that dropt from the skies; but she is a good Chris- 
tian." Here come her views on church government: — 
"An Annibabtist is a thing I am not a member of — I 
am a Pisplekan (Episcopalian) just now, and" (O you 
little Laodicean and Latitudinarian !) "a Prisbeteran at 
Kirkcaldy!" — {Blandula! Vagulaf cesium el animum 
mutas quce trans mare (i.e., trans Bodotriam)-curris!) — 
"my native town." "Sentiment is not what I am ac- 
quainted with as yet, though I wish it, and should like to 
practise it" (!) "I wish I had a great, great deal of 
gratitude in my heart, in all my body." "There is a 
new novel published, named "Self-Control" (Mrs, Brun- 
ton's) — "a very good maxim forsooth!" This is shock- 
ing: "Yesterday a marrade man, named Mr. John 
Balfour, Esq., offered to kiss me, and offered to marry 
me, though the man" (a fine directness this!) "was 
espused, and his wife was present and said he must ask 



Marjorie Fleming 243. 

her permission; but he did not. I think he was ashamed 
and confounded before 3 gentelman — Mr. Jobson and 
2 Mr. Kings." "Mr. Banester's (Bannister's) "Bud jet 
is to-night; I hope it will be a good one. A great many 
authors have expressed themselves too sentimentally." 
You are right, Marjorie. " A Mr. Burns writes a beauti- 
ful song on Mr. Cunhaming, whose wife desarted him — 
truly it is a most beautiful one." "I like to read the 
Fabulous historys, about the histerys of Robin, Dickey, 
flapsay, and Peccay, and it is very amusing, for some 
were good birds and others bad, but Peccay was the 
most dutiful and obedient to her parients." "Thomson 
is a beautiful author, and Pope, but nothing to Shake- 
spear, of which I have a little knolege. Macbeth is a 
pretty composition, but awful one." " The Newgate Cal- 
ender is very instructive" (!) "A sailor called here to 
say farewell; it must be dreadful to leave his native 
country when he might get a wife; or perhaps me, for I 
love him very much. But O I forgot, Isabella forbid me 
to speak about love." This antiphlogistic regimen and 
lesson is ill to learn by our Maidie, for here she sins 
again: "Love is a very papithatick thing" (it is almost 
a pity to correct this into pathetic), "as well as trouble- 
some and tiresome — but O Isabella forbid me to speak 
of it." Here are her reflections on a pine-apple: "I 
think the price of a pine-apple is very dear: it is a whole 
bright goulden guinea, that might have sustained a poor 
family." Here is a new vernal simile: "The hedges are 
sprouting like chicks from the eggs when they are newly 
hatched or, as the volgar say, clacked.'^ " Doctor Swift's 
works are very funny; I got some of them by heart." 
"Moreheads sermons are I hear much praised, but I 
never read sermons of any kind; but I read novelettes 



244 Essays Every Child Should Know 

and my Bible, and I never forget it, or my prayers." 
Bravo Marjorie! 

She seems now, when still about six, to have broken 
out into song: — 

EPHIBOL (EPIGRAM OR EPITAPH — WHO KNOWS WHICH?) ON 
MY DEAR LOVE ISABELLA 

Here lies sweet Isabell in bed, 
With a night-cap on her head; 
Her skin is soft, her face is fair, 
And she has very pretty hair; 
She and I in bed lies nice, 
And undisturbed by rats or mice; 
She is disgusted with Mr. Worgan, 
Though he plays upon the organ. 
Her nails are neat, her teeth are white, 
Her eyes are very, very bright; 
In a conspicuous town she lives. 
And to the poor her money gives: 
Here ends sweet Isabella's story, 
And may it be much to her glory. 

Here are some bits at random: — 

Of summer I am very fond 

And love to bathe into a pond; 

The look of sunshine dies away. 

And will not let me out to play; 

I love the morning's sun to spy 

Glittering through the casement's eye, 

The rays of light are very sweet. 

And puts away the taste of meat; 

The balmy breeze comes down from heaven. 

And makes us like for to be living. 

" The casawary is an curious bird, and so is the gigan- 
tic crane, and the pelican of the wilderness, whose mouth 



Marjorie Fleming 245 

holds a bucket of fish and water. Fighting is what ladies 
is not qualyfied for, they would not make a good figure 
in battle or in a duel. Alas! we females are of little 
use to our country. The history of all the malcontents 
as ever was hanged is amusing." Still harping on the 
^'Newgate Calendar"! 

"Braehead is extremely pleasant to me by the com- 
panie of swine, geese, cocks, etc., and they are the delight 
of my soul." 

"I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A 
young turkie of 2 or 3 months old, would you believe it, 
the father broke its leg, and he killed another! I think 
he ought to be transported or hanged." 

*' Queen Street is a very gay one, and so is Princes 
Street, for all the lads and lasses, besides bucks and beg- 
gars, parade there." 

"I should like to see a play very much, for I never 
saw one in all my life, and don't believe I ever shall; but 
I hope I can be content without going to one. I can be 
quite happy without my desire being granted." 

*' Some days ago Isabella had a terrible fit of the tooth- 
ake, and she walked with a long night-shift at dead of 
night like a ghost, and I thought she was one. She 
prayed for nature's sweet restorer — balmy sleep — but did 
not get it — a ghostly figure indeed she was, enough to 
make a saint tremble. It made me quiver and shake 
from top to toe. Superstition is a very mean thing, and 
should be despised and shunned." 

Here is her weakness and her strength again : — " In the 
love-novels all the heroines are very desperate. Isabella 
will not allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and 
it is too refined for my taste." " Miss Egward's (Edge- 
worth's) tails are very good, particularly some that are 



246 Essays Every Child Should Know 

very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and 
Tarelton, False Keys, etc. etc." 

"Tom Jones and Grey's Elegey in a country church- 
yard are both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, 
particularly by the men." Are our Marjories now-a-days 
better or worse because they cannot read Tom Jones 
unharmed? More better than worse; but who among 
them can repeat Gray's Lines on a Distant Prospect of 
Eton College as could our Maidie? 

Here is some more of her prattle: "I went into Isa- 
bella's bed to make her smile like the Genius Demedicus" 
(the Venus de Medicis) "or the statute in an ancient 
Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at which my 
anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfort- 
able nap. All was now hushed up again, but again my 
anger burst forth at her biding me get up." 

She begins thus loftily — 

Death the righteous love to see, 
But from it doth the wicked flee. 

Then suddenly breaks off (as if with laughter) — 

I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them! 

There is a thing I love to see, 
That is our monkey catch a flee, 

I love in Isa's bed to lie, 
Oh, such a joy and luxury! 
The bottom of the bed I sleep, 
And with great care within I creep ; 
Oft I embrace her feet of lillys, 
But she has goten all the pillys. 
Her neck I never can embrace, 
But I do hug her feet in place. 

How childish and yet how strong and free is her use 



Marjorie Fleming 247 

of words! — "I lay at the foot of the bed because Isa- 
bella said I disturbed her by continial fighting and kick- 
ing, but I was very dull, and continially at work reading 
the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I 
had slept at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of 
Udolpho. I am much interested in the fate of poor, poor 
Emily." 
Here is one of her swains: — 

Very soft and white his cheeks, 
His hair is red, and gray his breeks ; 
His tooth is like the daisy fair, 
His only fault is in his hair. 

This is a higher flight: — 
Dedicated to Mrs. H. Crawford by the Author, M. F. 

Three turkeys fair their last have breathed, 
And now this world forever leaved ; 
Their father, and their mother too, 
They sigh and weep as well as you ; 
Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched, 
Into eternity theire laanched, 
A direful death indeed they had. 
As wad put any parent mad ; 
But she was more than usual calm. 
She did not give a single dam. 

This last word is saved from all sin by its tender age, 
not to speak of the want of the n. We fear " she " is the 
abandoned mother, in spite of her previous sighs and 
tears. 

" Isabella says when we pray we should pray fervently, 
and not rattel over a prayer — for that we are kneeling 
at the footstool of our Lord and Creator, who saves us 
from eternal damnation, and from unquestionable fire 
and brimston." 



248 Essays Every Child Should Know 

She has a long poem on Mary Queen of Scots: — 

Queen Mary was much loved by all, 
Both by th? great and by the small, 
But hark! her soul to heaven doth rise! 
And I suppose she has gained a prize — 
For I do think she would not go 
Into the awful place below; 
There is a thing that I must tell, 
Elizabeth went to fire and hell; 
He who would teach her to be civil, 
It must be her great friend the divil! 

She hits off Darnley well: — 

A noble's son, a handsome lad, 
By some queer way or other, had 
Got quite the better of her heart. 
With him she always talked apart; 
Silly he was, but very fair, 
A greater buck was not found there. 

"By some queer way or other"; is not this the general 
case and the mystery, young ladies and gentlemen? 
Goethe's doctrine of "elective affinities" discovered by 
our Pet Maidie. 

SONNET TO A MONKEY 

lively, O most charming pug 
Thy graceful air, and heavenly mug; 
The beauties of his mind do shine, 
And every bit is shaped and fine. 
Your teeth are whiter than the snow; 
Your a great buck, your a great bean; 
Your eyes are of so nice a shape. 
More like a Christian's than an ape; 
Your cheek is like the rose's blume, 
Your hair is like the raven's plume; 
His nose's cast is of the Roman, 

He is a very pretty woman. 

1 could not get a rhyme for Roman, 
So was obliged to call him woman. 



Marjorie Fleming 249 

This last joke is good. She repeats it when writing of 
James the Second being killed at Roxburgh: — 

He was killed by a cannon splinter, 
Quite in the middle of the winter; 
Perhaps it was not at that time, 
But I can get no other rhyme!' 

Here is one of her last letters, dated Kirkcaldy, 12th 
October, 181 1. You can see how her nature is deepening 
and enriching: — "My Dear Mother, — You will think 
that I entirely forget you but I assure you that you are 
greatly mistaken. I think of you always and often sigh 
to think of the distance between us two loving creatures 
of nature. We have regular hours for all our occupations 
first at 7 o'clock we go to the dancing and come home at 
8 we then read our Bible and get our repeating and then 
play till ten then we get our music till 11 when we get 
our writing and accounts we sew from 12 till i after 
which I get my gramer and then work till five. At 7 we 
come and knit till 8 when we dont go to the dancing. 
This is an exact description. I must take a hasty fare- 
well to her whom I love, reverence and doat on and who 
I hope thinks the same of 

Marjory Fleming. 

"P. S. — An old pack of cards (!) would be very excep- 
tible." 

This other is a month earlier: — "My dear little 
Mama — I was truly happy to hear that you were all 
well. We are surrounded with measles at present on 
every side, for the Herons got it, and Isabella Heron was 
near Death's Door, and one night her father lifted her 
out of bed and she fell down as they thought lifeless. Mr. 
Heron said, 'That lassie's deed noo' — 'I'm no deed yet.' 
She then threw up a big worm nine inches and a half 



250 Essays Every Child Should Know 

long. I have begun dancing, but am not very fond of ity 
for the boys strikes and mocks me — I have been another 
night at the dancing; I Kke it better. I will write to you 
as often as I can; but I am afraid not every week. / 
long for you with the longings oj a child to embrace you 
— to fold you in my arms. I respect you with all the re- 
spect due to a mother. You dont know how I love you. So 
I shall remain, your loving child — M. Fleming." 

What rich involution of love in the words marked! 
Here are some lines to her beloved Isabella, in July, 
181 1 :— 

There is a thing that I do want, 

With you these beauteous walks to haunt, 

We would be happy if you would 

Try to come over if you could. 

Then I would all quite happy be 

Now and for all eternity. 

My mother is so very sweet, 

And checks my appetite to eat; 

My father shows us what to do; 

But O I'm sure that I want you. 

I have no more of poetry; 

O Isa do remember me, 

And try to love your Marjory. 

In a letter from "Isa" to 

Miss Muff Maidie Marjory Fleming, 
favoured by Rare Rear-Admiral Fleming, 

she says: " I long much to see you, and talk over all our 
old stories together, and to hear you read and repeat. I 
am pining for my old friend Cesario, and poor Lear, and 
wicked Richard. How is the dear Multiplication table 
going on ? are you still as much attached to 9 times 9 as 
you used to be?" 



Marjorie Fleming 251 

But this dainty, bright thing is about to flee — to come 
''quick to confusion." The measles she writes of seized 
her, and she died on the 19th of December, 181 1. The 
day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn 
and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming 
world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated the fol- 
lowing lines by Burns — heavy with the shadow of death, 
and lit with the fantasy of the judgment-seat — the 
publican's prayer in paraphrase: — 

Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene? 

Have I so found it full of pleasing charms ? 
Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between, 

Some gleams of sunshine 'mid renewing storms. 

Is it departing pangs my soul alarms ? 
Or death's unlovely, dreary, dark abode? 

For guilt, for guilt my terrors are in arms; 
I tremble to approach an angry God, 
And justly smart beneath his sin-avenging rod. 

Fain would I say, forgive my foul offence, 
Fain promise never more to disobey; 

But should my Author health again dispense, 
Again I might forsake fair virtue's way, 
Again in folly's path might go astray, 

Again exalt the brute and sink the man. 

Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, 

Who act so counter heavenly mercy's plan, 
Who sin so oft have mourned, yet to temptation ran? 

O thou great Governor of all below, 

If I might dare a lifted eye to thee, 
Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, 

And still the tumult of the raging sea; 

With that controlling power assist even me 
Those headstrong furious passions to confine, 

For all unfit I feel my powers to be 
So rule their torrent in the allowed line; 
O aid me with thy help. Omnipotence Divine. 



252 Essays Every Child Should Know 

It is more affecting than we care to say to read her 
mother's and Isabella Keith's letters written immediately 
after her death. Old and withered, tattered and pale, 
they are now: but when you read them how quick, how 
throbbing with life and love! how rich in that language 
of affection which only women, and Shakespeare, and 
Luther can use — that power of detaining the soul over 
the beloved object and its loss. 

K. Philip to Constance. 

You are as fond of grief as of your child. 

Const. Grief fills the room up of my absent child, 
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me; 
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form. 
Then I have reason to be fond of grief. 

What variations cannot love play on this one string! 

In her first letter to Miss Keith, Mrs. Fleming says 
of her dead Maidie: — "Never did I behold so beautiful 
an object. It resembled the finest wax-work. There 
was in the countenance an expression of sweetness and 
serenity which seemed to indicate that the pure spirit had 
anticipated the joys of heaven ere it quitted the mortal 
frame. To tell you what your Maidie said of you would 
fill volumes; for you was the constant theme of her dis- 
course, the subject of her thoughts, and ruler of her ac- 
tions. The last time she mentioned you was a few hours 
before all sense save that of suffering was suspended, 
when she said to Dr. Johnstone, 'If you will let me out 
at the New Year, I will be quite contented.' I asked 
what made her so anxious to get out then. *I want to 
purchase a New Year's gift for Isa Keith with the six- 
pence you gave me for being patient in the measles; and 



Marjorie Fleming 253 

I would like to choose it myself.' I do not remember her 
speaking afterwards, except to complain of her head, till 
just before she expired, when she articulated, *0 mother, 
mother!'" 

Do we make too much of this little child, who has been 
in her grave in Abbotshall Kirkyard these fifty and more 
years ? We may of her cleverness — not of her affection- 
ateness, her nature. What a picture the animosa injans 
gives us of herself, her vivacity, her passionateness, her 
precocious love-making, her passion for nature, for swine, 
for all living things, her reading, her turn for expression, 
her satire, her frankness, her little sins and rages, her 
great repentances! We don't wonder Walter Scott car- 
ried her off in the neuk of his plaid, and played himself 
with her for hours. 

The year before she died, when in Edinburgh, she was 
at a Twelfth Night supper at Scott's, in Castle Street. 
The company had all come — all but Marjorie. Scott's 
familiars, whom we all know, were there — ^all were come 
but Marjorie; and all were dull because Scott was dull. 
"Where's that bairn? what can have come over her? 
I'll go myself and see." And he was getting up, and 
would have gone; when the bell rang, and in came Dun- 
can Roy and his henchman Tougald, with the sedan chair, 
which was brought right into the lobby, and its top raised. 
And there, in its darkness and dingy old cloth, sat Maidie 
in white, her eyes gleaming, and Scott bending over her 
in ecstasy — " hung over her enamoured." " Sit ye there, 
my dautie, till they all see you"; and forthwith he 
brought them all. You can fancy the scene. And he 
lifted her up and marched to his seat with her on his 
stout shoulder, and set her down beside him; and then 



254 Essays Every Child Should Know 

began the night, and such a night! Those who knew 
Scott best said, that night was never equalled; Maidie 
and he were the stars; and she gave them Constance's 
speeches and Helvellyn, the ballad then much in vogue, 
and all her repertoire — Scott showing her off, and being 
ofttimes rebuked by her for his intentional blunders. 

We are indebted for the following — and our readers 
will be not unwilling to share our obligations — to her 
sister: — "Her birth was 15th January, 1803; her death 
19th December, 181 1. I take this from her Bibles.* I 
believe she was a child of robust health, of much vigour 
of body, and beautifully formed arms, and until her last 
illness, never was an hour in bed. She was niece to Mrs. 
Keith, residing in No. i North Charlotte Street, who was 
not Mrs. Murray Keith, although very intimately 
acquainted with that old lady. My aunt was a daughter 
of Mr. James Rae, surgeon, and married the younger 
son of old Keith of Ravelstone. Corstorphine Hill 
belonged to my aunt's husband; and his eldest son. Sir 
Alexander Keith, succeeded his uncle to both Ravelstone 
and Dunnottar. The Keiths were not connected by 
relationship with the Howisons of Braehead; but my 
grandfather and grandmother (who was), a daughter of 
Cant of Thurston and Giles-Grange, were on the most 
intimate footing with our Mrs. Keith's grandfather and 
grandmother; and so it has been for three generations, 
and the friendship consummated by my cousin William 
Keith marrying Isabella Craufurd. 

" As to my aunt and Scott, they were on a very intimate 
footing. He asked my aunt to be godmother to his 



* " Her Bible is before me; a pair, as then called; the faded marks are just 
as she placed them. There is one at D avid 's lament over Jonathan. ' ' 



Marjorie Fleming 255 

eldest daughter Sophia Charlotte. I had a copy of Miss 
Edgeworth's ^Rosamond, and Harry and Lucy' for long, 
which was a 'gift to Marjorie from Walter Scott,' prob- 
ably the first edition of that attractive series, for it wanted 
Trank,' which is always now published as part of the 
series, under the title of 'Early Lessons.' I regret to 
say these little volumes have disappeared." 

" Sir Walter w^as no relation of Marjorie's, but of the 
Keiths, through the Swintons; and, like Marjorie, he 
stayed much at Ravelstone in his early days, with his 
grand-aunt Mrs. Keith; and it was while seeing him 
there as a boy, that another aunt of mine composed, 
when he was about fourteen, the lines prognosticating 
his future fame that Lockhart ascribes in his Life to 
Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of 'The Flowers of the Forest': 

Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue 
Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you; 
Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise, 
By timely culture, to their native skies; 
Go, and employ the poet's heavenly art, 
Not merely to delight, but mend the heart. 

Mrs. Keir was my aunt's name, another of Dr. Rae's 
daughters." We cannot better end than in words from 
this same pen : " I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety 
in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie's last days, 
but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains 
to her. You are quite correct in stating that measles 
were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by 
the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie during this 
illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but love and 
poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone 
rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request 
speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year's 



256 Essays Every Child Should Know 

day came. When asked why she was so desirous of 
getting out, she immediately rejoined, *0h, I am so 
anxious to buy something with my sixpence for my dear 
Isa Keith.' Again, when lying very still, her mother 
asked her if there was anything she wished: 'Oh yes! 
if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and 
play " The Land o' the Leal," and I will lie and think, 
and enjoy myself (this is just as stated to me by her 
mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike 
to parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to 
come forth from the nursery to the parlour. It was 
Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father, who idolised 
this child, and never afterward in my hearing mentioned 
her name, took her in his arms; and while walking her 
up and down th room, she said, 'Father, I will repeat 
something to you; what would you like?' He said, 
'Just choose yourself, Maidie.' She hesitated for a 
moment between the paraphrase, 'Few are thy days, 
and full of woe,' and the lines of Burns already quoted, 
but decided on the latter, a remarkable choice for a child. 
The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the depths 
of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write 
a poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to 
allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded 
earnestly, 'Just this once'; the point was yielded, her 
slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote 
an address of fourteen lines, 'to her loved cousin on the 
author's recovery,' her last work on earth: 

Oh! Isa, pain did visit me, 

I was at the last extremity; 

How often did I think of you, 

I wished your graceful form to view, 

To clasp you in my weak embrace, 

Indeed I thought I'd run my race: 



Marjorie Fleming 257 

Good care, I'm sure, was of me taken, 
But still indeed I was much shaken, 
At last I daily strength did gain, 
And oh! at last, away went pain; 
At length the doctor thought I might 
Stay in the parlour all the night; 
I now continue so to do, 
Farewell to Nancy and to you. 

She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle 
of the night with the old cry of woe to a mother's heart, 
'My head, my head!' Three days of the dire malady, 
*water in the head,' followed, and the end came." 

Soft, silken primrose, fading timelessly. 

It is needless, it is impossible, to add anything to this: 
the fervour, the sweetness, the flush of poetic ecstasy, 
the lovely and gloing eye, the perfect nature of that 
bright and warm intelligence, that darling child — Lady 
Nairne's words, and the old tune, stealing up from the 
depths of the human heart, deep calling unto deep, 
gentle and strong like the waves of the great sea hushing 
themselves to sleep in the dark; the words of Burns 
touching the kindred chord, her last numbers "wildly 
sweet" traced, with thin and eager fingers, already 
touched by the last enemy and friend — moriens canit — • 
and that love which is so soon to be her everlasting light, 
is her song's burden to the end, 

She set as sets the morning star, which goes 
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides 
Obscured among the tempests of the sky. 
But melts away into the light of heaven." 

— John Brown, M.D. 



XVI 

BEING A BOY 

ONE of the best things in the world to be is a boy; 
it requires no experience, though it needs some 
practice to be a good one. The disadvantage of the 
position is that it does not last long enough; it is soon 
over; just as you get used to being a boy, you have to be 
something else, with a good deal more work to do and 
not half so much fun. And yet every boy is anxious to be 
a man, and is very uneasy with the restrictions that are 
put upon him as a boy. Good fun as it is to yoke up the 
calves and play work, there is not a boy on a farm but 
would rather drive a yoke of oxen at real work. What 
a glorious feeling it is, indeed, when a boy is for the first 
time given the long whip and permitted to drive the oxen, 
walking by their side, swinging the long lash, and shout- 
ing " Gee, Buck ! » " Haw, Golden ! " " Whoa, Bright 1'^ 
and all the rest of that remarkable language, until he m 
red in the face, and all the neighbours for half a mile are 
aware that something unusual is going on. If I were 
a boy, I am not sure but I would rather drive the oxen 
than have a birthday. 

The proudest day of my life was one day when I rode 
on the neap of the cart, and drove the oxen, all alone, 
with a load of apples to the cider-mill. I was so little, 
that it was a wonder that I didn't fall off, and get under 
the broad wheels. Nothing could make a boy, who 
cared anything for his appearance, feel flatter than to be 
258 



Being a Boy 259 

run over by the broad tire of a cartwheel. But I never 
heard of one who was, and I don't believe one ever will 
be. As I said, it was a great day for me, but I don't 
remember that the oxen cared much about it. They 
sagged along in their clumsy way, switching their tails in 
my face occasionally, and now and then giving a lurch to 
this or that side of the road, attracted by a choice tuft of 
grass. And then I "came the Julius Caesar " over them, if 
you will allow me to use such a slang expression, a 
liberty I never should permit you. I don't know that 
Julius Cassar ever drove cattle, though he must often have 
seen the peasants from the Campagna "haw" and "gee" 
them round the Forum (of course in Latin, a language 
that those cattle understood as well as ours do English) ; 
but what I mean is that I stood up and "hollered" with 
all my might, as everybody does with oxen, as if they 
were born deaf, and whacked them with the long lash 
over the head, just as the big folks did when they drove. 
I think now that it was a cowardly thing to crack the 
patient old fellows over the face and eyes, and make them 
wink in their meek manner. If I am ever a boy again 
on a farm, I shall speak gentle to the oxen, and not go 
screaming round the farm like a crazy man; and I shall 
not hit them a cruel cut with the lash every few minutes, 
because it looks big to do so and I cannot think of any- 
thing else to do. I never like lickings myself, and I don't 
know why an ox should like them, especially as he cannot 
reason about the moral improvement he is to get out of 
them. 

Speaking of Latin reminds me that I once taught my 
cows Latin. I don't mean that I taught them to read 
it, for it is very difficult to teach a cow to read Latin or 
any of the dead languages — a cow cares more for her 



26o Essays Every Child Should Know 

cud than she does for all the classics put together. But 
if you begin early you can teach a cow, or a calf (if you 
can teach a calf anything, which I doubt), Latin as well 
as English. There were ten cows, which I had to escort 
to and from pasture night and morning. To these cows 
I gave tjie names of the Roman numerals, beginning with 
Unus and Duo, and going up to Decem. Decem was 
of course the biggest cow of the party, or at least she was 
the ruler of the others, and had the place of honour in 
the stable and everywhere else. I admire cows, and 
especially the exactness with which they define their 
social position. In this case, Decem could "hck" 
Novem, and Novem could "lick" Octo, and so on down 
to Unus, who couldn't lick anybody, except her own 
calf. I suppose I ought to have called the weakest cow 
Una instead of Unus, considering her sex; but I didn't 
care much to teach the cows the declensions of adjectives, 
in which I was not very well up myself; and besides it 
would be of little use to a cow. People who devote 
themselves too severely to study of the classics are apt 
to become dried up; and you should never do anything 
to dry up a cow. Well, these ten cows knew their names 
after a while, at least they appeared to, and would take 
their places as I called them. At least, if Octo at- 
tempted to get before Novem in going through the bars 
(I have heard people speak of a "pair of bars" when 
there were six or eight of them), or into the stable, the 
matter of precedence was settled then and there, and 
once settled there was no dispute about it afterward. 
Novem either put her horns into Octo's ribs, and Octo 
shambled to one side, or else the two locked horns and 
tried the game of push and gore until one gave up. 
Nothing is stricter than the etiquette of a party of cows. 



Being a Boy 261 

There is nothing in royal courts equal to it; rank is 
exactly settled, and the same individuals always have the 
precedence. You know that at Windsor Castle, if the 
Royal Three-Ply Silver Stick should happen to get in 
front of the Most Royal Double-and-Twisted Golden 
Rod, when the court is going in to dinner, something so 
dreadful would happen that we don't dare to think of 
it. It is certain that the soup would get cold while the 
Golden Rod was pitching the Silver Stick out of the 
Castle window into the moat, and perhaps the island 
of Great Britian itself would split in two. But the 
people are very careful that it never shall happen, so 
we shall probably never know what the effect would 
be. Among cows, as I say, the question is settled in 
short order, and in a different manner from what it 
sometimes is in other society. It is said that in other 
society there is sometimes a great scramble for the first 
place, for the leadership as it is called, and that women, 
and men too, fight for what is called position; and in 
order to be first they will injure their neighbours by telling 
stories about them and by backbiting, which is the mean- 
est kind of biting there is, not excepting the bite of fleas. 
But in cow society there is nothing of this detraction in 
order to get the first place at the crib, or the farther stall 
in the stable. If the question arises, the cows turn in, 
horns and all, and settle it with one square fight, and that 
ends it. I have often admired this trait in cows. 

Besides Latin, I used to try to teach the cows a little 
poetry, and it is a very good plan. It does not do the 
cows much good, but it is very good exercise for a boy 
farmer. I used to commit to memory as good short 
poems as I could find (the cows liked to listen to Thana- 
topsis about as well as anything), and repeat them when 



262 Essays Every Child Should Know 

I went to the pasture, and as I drove the cows home 
through the sweet ferns and down the rocky slopes. It 
improves a boy's elocution a great deal more than driving 
oxen. 

It is a fact, also, that if a boy repeats Thanatopsis 
while he is milking, that operation acquires a certain 
dignity. 

— Charles Dudley Warner. 



XVII 

THE DELIGHTS OF FARMING 

THERE are so many bright spots in the Hfe of a farm- 
boy, that I sometimes think I should Hke to live 
the life over again; I should almost be willing to be a 
girl if it were not for the chores. There is a great com- 
fort to a boy in the amount of work he can get rid of 
doing. It is sometimes astonishing how slow he can go 
on an errand, he who leads the school in a race. The 
world is new and interesting to him, and there is so much 
to take his attention off, when he is sent to do anything. 
Perhaps he couldn't explain, himself, why, when he is 
sent to the neighbour's after yeast, he stops to stone the 
frogs; he is not exactly cruel, but he wants to see if he 
can hit 'em. No other living thing can go so slow as a 
boy sent on an errand. His legs seem to be lead, unless 
he happens to espy a woodchuck in an adjoining lot, 
when he gives chase to it like a deer; and it is a curious 
fact about boys, that two will be a great deal slower in 
doing anything than one, and that the more you have 
to help on a piece of work the less is accomplished. Boys 
have a great power of helping each other to do nothing; 
and they are so innocent about it, and unconscious. " I 
went as quick as ever I could," says the boy; his father 
asks him why he didn't stay all night, when he has been 
absent three hours on a ten-minute errand. The sarcasm 
has no effect on the boy. 

Going after the cows was a serious thing in my day, 
263 



264 Essays Every Child Should Know 

I had to climb a hill, which was covered with wild straw- 
berries in the season. Could any boy pass by those 
ripe berries ? And then in the fragrant hill pasture there 
were beds of wintergreen with red berries, tufts of colum- 
bine, roots of sassafras to be dug, and dozens of things 
good to eat or to smell, that I could not resist. It some 
times even lay in my way to climb a tree to look for a 
crow's nest, or to swing in the top, and to try if I could 
see the steeple of the village church. It became very 
important sometimes for me to see that steeple; and in 
the midst of my investigations the tin horn would blow 
a great blast from the farmhouse, which would send a 
cold chill down my back in the hottest days. I knew what 
it meant. It had a frightfully impatient quaver in it, 
not at all like the sweet note that called us to dinner 
from the hayfield. It said, " Why on earth doesn't that 
boy come home? It is almost dark, and the cows 
ain't milked!" And that was the time the cows had to 
start into a brisk pace and make up for lost time. I 
wonder if any boy ever drove the cows home late, who 
did not say that the cows were at the very farther end of 
the pasture, and that " Old Brindle" was hidden in the 
woods, and he couldn't find her for ever so long! The 
brindle cow is the boy's scape-goat, many a time. 

No other boy knows how to appreciate a holiday as 
the farm-boy does; and his best ones are of a peculiar 
kind. Going fishing is of course one sort. The excite- 
ment of rigging up the tackle, digging the bait, and the 
anticipation of great luck; these are pure pleasures, 
enjoyed because they are rare. Boys who can go a- 
fishing any time care but little for it. Tramping all 
day through bush and brier, fighting flies and mosquitoes, 
and branches that tangle the line, and snags that break 



The Delights of Farming 265 

the hook, and returning home late and hungry, with 
wet feet and a string of speckled trout on a willow twig, 
and having the family crowd out at the kitchen door to 
look at 'em, and say, "Pretty well done for you, bub; 
did you catch that big one yourself" — this is also pure 
happiness, the like of which the boy will never have 
again, not if he comes to be selectman and deacon and 
to "keep store." 

But the holidays I recall with delight were the two 
days in spring and fall, when we went to the distant 
pasture-land, in a neighbouring town, maybe, to drive 
thither the young cattle and colts, and to bring them back 
again. It was a wild and rocky upland where our great 
pasture was, many miles from home, the road to it run- 
ning by a brawling river, and up a dashing brookside 
among great hills. What a day's adventure it was! It 
was like a journey to Europe. The night before, I could 
scarcely sleep for thinking of it, and there was no trouble 
about getting me up at sunrise that morning. The 
breakfast was eaten, the luncheon was packed in a large 
basket, with bottles of root-beer and a jug of switchel, 
which packing I superintended with the greatest interest; 
and then the cattle were to be collected for the march, 
and the horses hitched up. Did I shirk any duty ? Was 
I slow? I think not. I was willing to run my legs off 
after the frisky steers, who seemed to have an idea they 
were going on a lark, and frolicked about, dashing into 
all gates, and through all bars except the right ones; and 
how cheerfully I did yell at them; it was a glorious chance 
to "holler," and I have never since heard any public 
speaker on the stump or at camp-meeting who could 
make more noise. I have often thought it fortunate 
that the amount of noise in a boy does not increase 



266 Essays Every Child Should Know 

in proportion to his size; if it did the world could not 
contain it. 

The whole day was full of excitement and of freedom. 
We were away from the farm, which to a boy is one of 
the best parts of farming; we saw other farms and other 
people at work; I had the pleasure of marching along, 
and swinging my whip, past boys whom I knew, who 
were picking up stones. Every turn of the road, every 
bend and rapid of the river, the great boulders by the 
wayside, the watering-troughs, the giant pine that had 
been struck by lightning, the mysterious covered bridge 
over the river where it was most swift and rocky and 
foamy, the chance eagle in the blue sky, the sense of going 
somewhere — why, as I recall all these things I feel that 
even the Prince Imperial, as he used to dash on horse- 
back through the Bois de Boulogne, with fifty mounted 
hussars clattering at his heels, and crowds of people 
cheering, could not have been as happy as was I, a boy 
in short jacket and shorter pantaloons, trudging in the 
dust that day behind the steers and colts, cracking my 
black-stock whip. 

I wish the journey would never end; but at last, by 
noon, we reach the pastures and turn in the herd; and 
after making the tour of the lots to make sure there are 
no breaks in the fences, we take our luncheon from the 
wagon and eat it under the trees by the spring. This is 
the supreme moment of the day. This is the way to 
live; this is like the Swiss Family Robinson, and all the 
rest of my delightful acquaintances in romance. Baked 
beans, rye-and-indian bread (moist, remember), dough- 
nuts and cheese, pie, and root beer. What richness! 
You may live to dine at Delmonico's, or, if those French- 
men do not eat each other up, at Philippe's, in the Rue 



The Delights oj Farming 267 

Montorgueil in Paris, where the dear old Thackeray- 
used to eat as good a dinner as anybody; but you will 
get there neither doughnuts, nor pie, nor root beer, nor 
anything so good as that luncheon at noon in the old 
pasture, high among the Massachusetts hills! Nor will 
you ever, if you live to be the oldest boy in the world, 
have any holiday equal to the one I have described. But 
I always regretted that I did not take along a fish-line, 
just to " throw in " the brook we passed. I know there 
were trout there. 

— Charles Dudley Warner. 



XVIII 
THE LITTLE VIOLINIST 

THIS story is no invention of mine. I could not 
invent anything half so lovely and pathetic as 
seems to me the incident which has come ready-made to 
my hand. 

Some of you, doubtless, have heard of James Speaight, 
the infant violinist, or Young Americus, as he was called. 
He was born in London, I believe, and was only four 
years old when his father brought him to this country 
about three years ago. Since that time he has appeared 
in concerts and various entertainments in many of our 
principal cities, attracting unusual attention by his 
musical skill. I confess, however, that I had not heard 
of him until last month, though it seems he had previously 
given two or three public performances in the city where 
I live. I had not heard of him, I say, until last month; 
but since then I do not think a day has passed when this 
child's face has not risen up in my memory — the little 
half-sad face, as I saw it once, with its large serious eyes 
and infantile mouth. 

I have, I trust, great tenderness for all children; but 
I know that I have special place in my heart for those 
poor little creatures who figure in circuses and shows, or 
elsewhere, as "infant prodigies." Heaven help such 
little folk ! It was an unkind fate that did not make them 
commonplace, stupid, happy girls and boys like our own 
Fannys and Charleys and Harrys. Poor little waifs, 

268 



The Little Violinist 269 

that never know any babyhood or childhood — sad human 
midgets, that flutter for a moment in the glare of the gas- 
lights, and are gone. Pitiful little children, whose tender 
limbs and minds are so torn and strained by thoughtless 
task-masters, that it seems scarcely a regrettable thing 
when the circus caravan halts awhile on its route to make 
a small grave by the wayside. 

I never witness a performance of child-acrobats, or 
the exhibition of any forced talent, physical or mental, 
on the part of children, without protesting, at least 
in my own mind, against the blindness and cruelty 
of their parents or guardians, or whoever has care of 
them. 

I saw at the theatre, the other night, two tiny girls — 
mere babies they were — doing such feats upon a bar of 
wood suspended from the ceiling as made my blood run 
cold. They were twin sisters, these mites, with that old 
young look on their faces, which all such unfortunates 
have. I hardly dared glance at them, up there in the 
air, hanging by their feet from the swinging bar, twisting 
their fragile spines and distorting their poor little bodies, 
when they ought to have been nestled in soft blankets in 
a cosey chamber, with the angels that guard the sleep of 
little children hovering above them. I hope that the 
father of those two babies will read and ponder this page, 
on which I record not alone my individual protest, but 
the protest of hundreds of men and women who took no 
pleasure in that performance, but witnessed it with a 
pang of pity. 

There is a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
Dumb Animals. There ought to be a Society for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Little Children; and a certain 
influential gentleman, who does some things well and 



270 Essays Every Child Should Know 

other things very badly, ought to attend to it. The name 
of this gentleman is Public Opinion. 

But to my story. 

One September morning, about five years and a half 
ago, there wandered to my fireside, hand in hand, two 
small personages who requested in a foreign language, 
which I understood at once, to be taken in and fed and 
clothed and sent to school and loved and tenderly cared 
for. Very modest of them — was it not ? — in view of the 
fact that I had never seen either of them before. To all 
intents and purposes they were perfect strangers to me. 
What was my surprise when it turned out (just as if it were 
in a fairy legend) that these were my own sons! When 
I say they came hand in hand, it is to advise you that 
these two boys were twins, like that pair of tiny girls 
I just mentioned. 

These young gentlemen are at present known as 
Charley and Talbot, in the household, and to a very 
limited circle of acquaintances outside; but as Charley 
has declared his intention to become a circus-rider, and 
Talbot, who has not so soaring an ambition, has resolved 
to be a policeman, it is likely the world will hear of them 
before long. In the meantime, and with a view to the 
severe duties of the professions selected, they are learning 
the alphabet, Charley vaulting over the hard letters with 
an agility which promises well for his career as circus- 
rider, and Talbot collaring the slippery S's and pursuing 
the suspicious X Y Z's with the promptness and boldness 
of a night-watchman. 

Now it is my pleasure not only to feed and clothe 
Masters Charley and Talbot as if they were young 
princes or dukes, but to look to it that they do not wear 
out their ingenious minds by too much study. So I 



The Little Violinist 271 

occasionally take them to a puppet-show or a musical 
entertainment, and always in holiday time to see a pan- 
tomime. This last is their especial delight. It is a fine 
thing to behold the businesslike air with which they climb 
into their seats in the parquet, and the gravity with which 
they immediately begin to read the play-bill upside down. 
Then, between the acts, the solemnity, with which they 
extract the juice from an orange, through a hole made 
with a lead-pencil, is also a noticeable thing. 

Their knowledge of the mysteries of Fairyland is at 
once varied and profound. Everything delights, but 
nothing astonishes them. That persons covered with 
spangles should dive headlong through the floor; that 
fairy queens should step out of the trunks of trees; that 
the poor wood-cutter's cottage should change, in the 
twinkling of an eye, into a glorious palace or a goblin 
grotto under the sea, with crimson fountains and golden 
staircases and silver foliage — all that is a matter of course. 
This is the kind of world they live in at present. If these 
things happened at home they would not be astonished. 

The other day, it was just before Christmas, I saw the 
boys attentively regarding a large pumpkin which lay 
on the kitchen floor, waiting to be made into pies. If 
that pumpkin had suddenly opened, if wheels had 
sprouted out on each side, and if the two kittens play- 
ing with an onion-skin by the range had turned into milk- 
white ponies and harnessed themselves to this Cinderella 
coach, neither Charley nor Talbot would have considered 
it an unusual circumstance. 

The pantomime which is usually played at the Boston 
Theatre during the holidays is to them positive proof 
that the stories of Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk 
and Jack the Giant Killer have historical solidity. They 



272 Essays Every Child Should Know 

like to be reassured on that point. So one morning last 
January, when I informed Charley and Talbot, at the 
breakfast-table, that Prince Rupert and his court had 
come to town, 

Some in jags, 
Some in rags, 
And some in velvet gown, 

the news was received with great satisfaction; for this 
meant that we were to go to the play. 

For the sake of the small folk, who could not visit 
him at night. Prince Rupert was gracious enough to 
appear every Saturday afternoon during the month. 
We decided to wait upon his Highness at one of his 
matinees. 

You would never have dreamed that the sun was 
shining bright outside, if you had been with us in the 
theatre that afternoon. All the window-shutters were 
closed, and the great glass chandelier hanging from the 
gaily painted dome was one blaze of light. But brighter 
even than the jets of gas were the ruddy, eager faces of 
countless boys and girls, fringing the balconies and 
crowded into the seats below, longing for the play to 
begin. And nowhere were there two merrier or more 
eager faces than those of Charley and Talbot, pecking now 
and then at a brown paper cone filled with white grapes, 
which I held, and waiting for the solemn green curtain 
to roll up, and disclose the coral realm of the Naiad 
Queen. 

I shall touch very lightly on the literary aspects of 
the play. Its plot, like that of the realistic novel, was 
of so subtile a nature as not to be visible to the naked eye. 
I doubt if the dramatist himself could have explained it, 



The Little Violinist 273 

even if he had been so condescending as to attempt to 
do so. There was a bold young prince — Prince Rupert, 
of course — who went into Wonderland in search of 
adventures. He reached Wonderland by leaping from 
the castle of Drachenfels into the Rhine. Then there 
was one Snaps, the prince's valet, who did not in the least 
want to go, but went, and got terribly frightened by the 
Green Demons of the Chrysolite Cavern, which made us 
all laugh — it being such a pleasant thing to see some- 
body else scared nearly to death. Then there were 
knights in brave tin armour, and armies of fair pre- 
Raphaelite Amazons in all the colours of the rainbow, 
and troops of unhappy slave-girls, who did nothing but 
smile and wear beautiful dresses, and dance continually 
to the most delightful music. Now you were in an 
enchanted castle on the banks of the Rhine, and now you 
were in a cave of amethysts and diamonds at the bottom 
of the river — scene following scene with such bewildering 
rapidity that finally you did not quite know where you 
w^ere. 

But what interested me most, and what pleased Charley 
and Talbot even beyond the Naiad Queen herself, was 
the little violinist who came to the German Court, and 
played before Prince Rupert and his bride. 

It was such a little fellow! He was not more than a 
year older than my own boys, and not much taller. He 
had a very sweet, sensitive face, with large gray eyes, 
in which there was a deep-settled expression that I do 
not like to see in a child. Looking at his eyes alone, you 
would have said he was sixteen or seventeen, and he was 
merely a baby! 

I do not know enough of music to assert that he had 
wonderful genius, or any genius at all; but it seemed to 



274 Essays Every Child Should Know 

me he played charmingly, and with the touch of a natural 
musician. 

At the end of his piece, he was lifted over the foot- 
lights of the stage into the orchestra, where, with the 
conductor's baton in his hand, he directed the musicians 
in playing one or two difficult compositions. In this he 
evinced a carefully trained ear and a perfect understand- 
ing of the music. 

I wanted to hear the little violin again; but as he 
made his bow to the audience and ran off, it was with 
a half -wearied air, and I did not join with my neighbours 
in calling him back. "There's another performance 
to-night," I reflected, "and the little fellow isn't very 
strong." He came out, however, and bowed, but did 
not play again. 

All the way home from the theatre my children were 
full of the little violinist, and as they went along, chatter- 
ing and frolicking in front of me, and getting under my 
feet like a couple of young spaniels (they did not look 
unlike two small brown spaniels, with their fur-trimmed 
overcoats and sealskin caps and ear-lappets), I could 
not help thinking how different the poor little musician's 
lot was from theirs. 

He was only six years and a half old, and had been 
before the public nearly two years. What hours of toil 
and weariness he must have been passing through at the 
very time when my little ones were being rocked and pet- 
ted and shielded from every ungentle wind that blows! 
And what an existence was his now — travelling from 
city to city, practising at every spare moment, and per- 
forming night after night in some close theatre or concert- 
room when he should be drinking in that deep, refresh- 
ing slumber which childhood needs! However much 



The Little Violinist 275 

he was loved by those who had charge of him, and they 
must have treated him kindly, it was a hard life for the 
child. 

He ought to have been turned out into the sunshine; 
that pretty violin — one can easily understand that he was 
fond of it himself — ought to have been taken away from 
him, and a kite-string placed in his hand instead. If 
God had set the germ of a great musician or a great com- 
poser in that slight body, surely it would have been wise 
to let the precious gift ripen and flower in its own good 
season. 

This is what I thought, walking home in the amber 
glow of the wintry sunset; but my boys saw only the 
bright side of the tapestry, and would have liked nothing 
better than to change places with little James Speaight. 
To stand in the midst of Fairyland, and play beautiful 
tunes on a toy fiddle, while all the people clapped their 
hands — ^what could quite equal that? Charley began 
to think it was no such grand thing to be a circus-rider, 
and the dazzling career of policeman had lost something 
of its glamour in the eyes of Talbot. 

It is my custom every night, after the children are 
snug in their nest and the gas is turned down, to sit on 
the side of the bed and chat with them five or ten minutes. 
If anything has gone wrong through the day, it is never 
alluded to at this time. None but the most agreeable 
topics are discussed. I make it a point that the boys 
shall go to sleep with untroubled hearts. When our 
chat is ended, they say their prayers. Now, among the 
pleas which they offer up for the several members of the 
family, they frequently intrude the claims of rather 
curious objects for Divine compassion. Sometimes it 
is the rocking-horse that has broken a leg, sometimes it 



276 Essays Every Child Should Know 

is Shem or Japhet, who has lost an arm in disembarking 
from Noah's ark; Pinky and Inky, the kittens, and Rob, 
the dog, are never forgotten. 

So it did not surprise me at all this Saturday night 
when both boys prayed God to watch over and bless 
the little violinist. 

The next morning at the breakfast-table, when I 
unfolded the newspaper, the first paragraph my eyes 
fell upon was this — 

"James Speaight, the infant violinist, died in this 
city late Saturday night. At the matinee of the Naiad 
Queen, on the afternoon of that day, when little James 
Speaight came off the stage, after giving his usual violin 
performance, Mr. Shewell noticed that he appeared 
fatigued, and asked if he felt ill. He replied that he had 
a pain in his heart, and then Mr. Shewell suggested that 
he remain away from the evening performance. He 
retired quite early, and about midnight his father heard 
him say, ^Gracious God, make room for another little child 
in heaven."* No sound was heard after this, and his 
father spoke to him soon afterwards; he received no 
answer, but found his child dead." 

The printed letters grew dim and melted into pne 
another, as I tried to re-read them. I glanced across 
the table at Charley and Talbot eating their breakfast, 
with the slanted sunlight from the window turning their 
curls into real gold, and I had not the heart to tell them 
what had happened. 

Of all the prayers that floated up to heaven, that 
Saturday night, from the bedsides of sorrowful men 
and women, or from the cots of innocent children, what 
accents could have fallen more piteously and tenderly 
upon the ear of a listening angel than the prayer of little 



The Little Violinist 277 

James Speaight! He knew he was dying. The faith 
he had learned, perhaps while running at his mother's 
side, in some green English lane, came to him then. He 
remembered it was Christ who said, "Suffer the little 
children to come unte me;" and the beautiful prayer rose 
to his lips, " Gracious God, make room for another Httle 
child in heaven." 

I folded up the newspaper silently, and throughout 
the day I did not speak before the boys of the little 
violinist's death; but when the time came for our cus- 
tomary chat in the nursery, I told the story to Charley and 
Talbot. I do not think that they understood it very 
well, and still less did they understand why I lingered 
so much longer than usual by their bedside that Sunday 
night. 

As I sat there in the dimly lighted room, it seemed 
to me that I could hear, in the pauses of the winter wind, 
faintly and doubtfully somewhere in the distance, the 
sound of the little violin. 

Ah, that little violin! — a cherished relic now. Per- 
haps it plays soft, plaintive airs all by itself, in the place 
where it is kept, missing the touch of the baby fingers 
which used to waken it into life! 

— ^Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 



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